September 17, 1908

September 17, 1908. This was the day that my Grandma (Elva Alice Anderson Belcher) was born. She passed away in May of this year but today would have been her 103rd Birthday! 103 seems like just a number, but when I think about what she saw in her lifetime I stand utterly amazed. She was a special woman, the oldest of 11 children in a small, South Georgia town. Her life was the story you only hear about in books and movies. Growing up in the world of farms, horse & buggies, outhouses, no electricity, and housework she was taught at an early age the meaning of hard work. In her life she witnessed the invention of the automobile, the airplane, home telephones (what we call landlines), the radio, the television (black and white, and then color), the computer, music records, cassette tapes, CDs, VHS tapes, DVD players, cellphones and so much more. She experienced the life and times of World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, The Cold War, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. She was saddened with the rest of the world on the days of Pearl Harbor, JFK Assassination and 9/11.
She could tell you stories of walking to school, "courting" in the parlor, spending all day preparing supper for the family, living off hardly nothing in the Great Depression, being a farmer's wife, a mother to four children, pulling all-nighters to make a daughter's dressing for a school dance and a loving grandmother and great-grandmother.
Nothing pleased her more than family coming to visit her at the farm and she could make her famous chocolate layer cake. If you were the first to shoot a deer once deer season came around, you won the award of her winning smile! My Grandma is greatly missed and will continue to be. She gave us 102 years of life of love, crotcheted blankets, chocolate cakes, smiles, hugs and kisses.

(Our family when my Grandma was 99 years old)

(She loved when her great-grandchildren came deer hunting)