A Treasure at 107: Saramae Williams Landers
It’s pretty rare to meet people who are 107 years old. Although we are all living longer, most of us never make it to 90, let alone 100. The current average lifespan is 78. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, those over 100 years old, called centenarians, number around 75,000 in the U.S.—about one in every 4,000 people. That number is expected to grow to more than 600,000 by 2050. Everyone, of course, ages. As early as 2017, it will be the first time in the U.S. that people 65 and older will outnumber children younger than five.
Aging is not easy, and not for the faint of heart. However, elderly who stay active, are cared for by loved ones, are shown respect, and have healthy living habits tend to have their lives prolonged—and do make it into the centenarian “club.”
Saramae Williams Landers is a perfect example. At 107, she’s barely 4’9”, weighs in at about 85 pounds, has hair white as snow, and sparkly blue eyes. Thin-boned with tender, almost translucent skin, she’s slightly hard of hearing (doesn’t always wear her hearing aides because they hurt), has survived three bouts of cancer, and suffers from macular degeneration, so she no longer can read.
She has the dignity and poise of a lady and the humor of the worldly, seasoned traveler she is. Like many aging minds, she doesn’t transition quickly from one topic to another. When recalling things that happened more than fifty years ago, she’s likely to say, “Well, that happened so long ago!” Memories do fade. When you’ve lived for more than a hundred years, it’s hard to hold on to that much life experience.
Saramae lives in Hawaiian Beaches with her daughter, Sara Burgess, who herself is in her 80s, and you wouldn’t know it to be with her. Sara’s mission is to take care of her mother. And at that she is succeeding remarkably because she is exceedingly caring. She continually schools herself on the aging process, and other family is also nearby. Saramae’s grandson, Alex and grand-niece, Mahilani, who is married to Jerry Hiatt, are both on-island. Her sister Stella’s daughter, Jacqueline Kellet, and her family live on O‘ahu.
Saramae first came to Hawai‘i in 1927 to visit her sister, Stella, who was teaching in Hilo. At the time, Saramae was a college student and chanced to get a job teaching the “receiving grade” at Mountain View Elementary—for English as a second language students—and then at the Pu‘u Maile Home, a tuberculosis sanitarium, before returning to the mainland to get married.
In 2001, she moved to Hawai‘i permanently from Washington State, where her son, Lewis Landers, still lives with his family and where she was living until her husband, Floyd Landers, entrepreneur and former Boeing employee, passed away. At loose ends after his death, Saramae joined a novel senior citizen program at Western Washington University. Seniors lived on campus for $75/month and took courses in any subject area. The opportunity suited Saramae so well because she loved to learn, she was lonely, and this program afforded some travel opportunities to places like Greece. Yet another program under Jimmy Carter, the Friendship Force, got her traveling to Korea and elsewhere. Back at her home in Renton, she took more courses at Renton Vocational Technical College across the street. She preferred courses in subjects she knew nothing about, like scuba diving (this because she wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef). It was there that she came upon Lars Husby, a ceramicist, whose guided trips to Mexico always included her. This era in her life was truly about radical expansion and flowering as a world citizen.
Early Years in Idaho
Born in Samaria, Idaho, on April 4, 1906, Saramae grew up on a dry farm in a family of nine. Besides her parents, she had an older sister, two older brothers, a younger sister, and two younger brothers. Sitting right in the middle of seven, she joked that middle child syndrome was her excuse for being unpredictable and adventurous. With a large family, in those days, everyone worked starting at young ages and not all children went to college. However, education was paramount in her family.
Her father, Lewis Williams, inherited his father’s mercantile business and wheat farm in Samaria. A grandson of Welsh immigrants who were Mormon converts (Samaria was a rural Mormon colony), Lewis eventually got appointed by Woodrow Wilson to be an IRS collector for the territory, and the family moved to Boise. A strong supporter of Social Security and the director of charitable institutions for the State of Idaho, he became well known as a public speaker.
The family was close-knit, loyal, and egalitarian. That meant everyone was going to get an education and siblings had to help one another get through college. When Saramae’s elder brother finished college and got a job, he helped her afford the University of Idaho.
The children embraced the ideal that it was important to make one’s voice heard. When women earned the right to vote in 1920, the year the 14th Amendment was passed, Saramae voted because it was her civic duty and has voted in every election since. At her 107th birthday party, a congratulatory birthday wish from Hawai‘i Governor Neil Abercrombie lauded her career as an educator (with a master’s in psychology, she worked as a counselor at Dimmitt Middle School in the Renton School District) and as a woman who “never missed an opportunity to cast a vote.”
She has strong beliefs about this. “We live in a democracy,” she says. “If you want to live in a democracy, then you should be part of it. You should vote. It’s your duty—part of your responsibility. That’s part of being a citizen, and if you didn’t vote, then you shouldn’t complain about how the government is run. It’s your country. Voting is part of your responsibility to participate.”
Part of her fervor also comes from early conditioning. In her youth, she loved to recite poetry (she still can) and was a feature at Democratic rallies supporting democratic causes for and with her father. Here’s one of her early recitations: “I am 7 years old, a Democrat and true blue for Woodrow Wilson.”
She and her daughter, Sara, are still active in the Democratic Party. In fact, Saramae rides in the 4th of July Parade in Kailua-Kona, in Jackie Rey’s woody station wagon. She’s a celebrity in the Democratic Party as the “ODH”—the Oldest Democrat in Hawai‘i. Mayor Kenoi declared April 10, 2013 as “Saramae Landers Day.”
When I met with her, she was wearing hot pink leggings, with a white top and blue jacket, and aside from the fact that she needed to keep her legs elevated that day, she looked like she was ready to go out on the town.
We talked a lot about her recent travels. Some people really do have bucket lists, and Saramae has had her own for many years. In her 80s, she went to Sri Lanka and India. She’s been to Australia and saw the Great Barrier Reef from a glass-bottom boat. For years she was part of a kind of Elderhostel group that traveled to Mexico, Greece, Istanbul, and out of the way places. The group was dubbed “On the Loose with Lars” (Lars headed the program).
In 2008, a small Landers family contingent took a trip to Thailand. Destination: Ayutthaya, in the Chao Phraya River valley in central Thailand. The purpose: to ride an elephant. The thing that stood out most for her was not the pachyderm. It was the warmth and deference of the Thai people. In Thailand, anyone over 100 is revered “almost as a God,” noted Saramae. So at 102, she was on the receiving end of gifts and much admiration. The family stayed in a World Heritage site and enjoyed splendid surroundings. As for the elephant ride, Saramae’s aide bowed in reverence before helping her climb aboard. Once she was atop and the elephant started to walk, although she was high off the ground and the seat swayed a bit, she wasn’t at all scared.
“It wasn’t particularly exciting. I just felt so small,” she said. “Everyone was making such a big fuss, but it didn’t seem like anything to me.”
In 2012, when she was 106, her birthday celebration took place in a restaurant in Athens, Greece, with friends from her earlier travels. Neither the long flight nor navigating Mykonos and Santorini in a wheelchair for a month deterred her.
Among the benefits of being her age is she rarely pays for a meal, no matter what part of the world she’s visiting. People insist on treating her, Sara notes.
And speaking of treatment, she receives excellent care at both Puna Community Medical Center and at Hilo Medical Center from Dr. Stephan Harmeling.
When I asked Saramae if she had any advice for people, she said, “Well, yesterday’s gone, and tomorrow’s not here yet, so just live today.” She is well beyond the need to look very far into the future and seems to live richly in the now.
Her daily life starts early. She’s up a 6 am, and eats breakfast: toast, fruit, sometimes oatmeal with raisins, and coffee. She likes the Elderly Recreation Services program held at the Pāhoa Senior Center on weekdays. It’s sponsored by Hawai‘i County Department of Parks and Recreation. Van service is available, and Saramae’s driver, Mr. Lincoln, is at her door at 7:45 am and helps her to the van. At the Center, crafting projects and snacks are served up, then it is lunch and socializing before all return home. The care Mr. Lincoln—and everyone else—takes with Saramae makes it easy for daughter Sara to let her mother go out without her. They try to do something different every afternoon as long as Saramae is up to it. Friday is art day at the hot ponds in Puna. One of the artists, Ken Charon, was so taken with Saramae that he painted her portrait and gave it to her!
She used to read all the time and has spent a lot of hours in libraries. She still visits the Pāhoa Library, even though she can’t read anymore. It was her friends from the library who came en masse to celebrate her 107th birthday at the Palace Theater back in April.
Reading and traveling have made her wise. While in Istanbul on one of her excursions, a Turkish man asked her where she was from, and she said, “America.” “North or South?” he asked. That’s when it hit her that “America” represented more than a country—it’s a hemisphere of incredible diversity.
It was at the Taj Mahal that Saramae had another realization. Despite the plethora of languages and cultures and skin tones that make up the world population, she says, “We are different, with different beliefs, and we express them in different styles, but we all laugh and cry in the same language.”
Indeed, we do. ❖
At festive occasions, Saramae has a favorite toast:
“May you live a long life, full of goodness and health,
with a pocket of gold as the least of your wealth.
May the dreams you hold dearest
be the ones that come true, and
the friendships you make keep returning to you.
And trusting in Him to whom we all pray,
may a song fill your heart every step of the way.”
Contact writer Paula Thomas: paula@delphipacific.com
Paula Thomas
Writing has always been fun for me and I’ve read since I was a child. These days, I read fiction, non-fiction–biographical, spiritual, scientific, historical—and enjoy each for what it brings to light. Reading is a way I keep learning, and it informs my writing. I tend to observe human nature and mull over the ways in which facts, fiction, and our beliefs collide to make life unceasingly interesting. I hold an English and economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s in dance. I’m also a certified yoga teacher and studied movement/body-mind work during much of my early adulthood.
