It was the day before Edna “I go by my middle name Lucille” Tharp’s 100th birthday and the kitchen of her home on Easy St. in Waynesburg was filled with family. Some gathered around her, hands busy turning fruit and croissants into kabobs and sandwiches for the many visitors who would drop by on February 24.
“I’m a blessed person,” the diminutive, soon-to-be-centurion declared with a smile, from her place at the head of the table. “Two, 24, 24! That’s when I was born.” Her memories are the stuff of family legend and her ability to recall the many small details of living through nine decades and counting is remarkable. Surrounded in the kitchen by daughters, granddaughters, and son Stephen (in from Ohio for the occasion), her story of a life well lived got told as the fruit kabobs got made.
If there are three things the whole family credits for giving their mom a long life, it would be hard work, (She never sat down, and you never told her you were bored!) a family that never quarreled…. and cloves.
“She always said cloves made her live this long!” daughter Patricia “I go by my middle name Joan!” Brown said. She and husband Gary live next door and there’s always a family member or two here to keep Lucille comfortable and entertained in every way. “Mom is amazing! Every morning she wakes up singing a hymn. She can’t get out to church any more [at Rolling Meadows Church of God], but Pastor Berkey keeps an eye on her. She’s a wonderful cook – used to bake nine loaves of bread a week when we lived on the farm in Sycamore. At church they used to ask, ‘Is Sister Tharp going to make her chocolate cake?’”
Lucille beamed and nodded. “I’ve always gone to church. The day I lose my song, I’ll be gone.”
Memories came with laughter and prompts from the family and some adjusting of hearing aids.
“I was born in Wanna, West Virginia, but my mother came back to Greene County when I was an infant,” Lucille recalled. “My cousin carried me to my new home.”
The Edgar farm was a few miles up the road from Brave. She grew up surrounded by aunts, uncles, and Emma Jane Edgar – a grandmother she adored. “My grandmother smelled like cloves, and I loved it. I always had a clove tucked in my lip!”
As to the hard work: “I lived through the depression. I loved school. I dearly loved to read.” A little frown now. “In eighth grade, I was the highest in the township, but I had to quit school and help out.”
Helping meant going with her mother and aunts to clean houses and care for those in need in their homes. Helping meant learning to sew and becoming “a seamstress for the whole family. I was a good one.”
As to marriage—an impish grin. “My mom said I had to be 18 when I got married, but I got married [to Kenneth Walter Tharp, 1917-2005] on February 6, 1942, and my 18th birthday was February 24.”
It was the war years, and the new couple would spend their first year in “a little house in Khuntown. You used everything. The government sent us materials to make our own mattresses. I had to fluff that cotton and it went up my nose, but it was a good mattress. It lasted for years.”
The Tharps moved when Kenneth got a job at Moore’s Bakery in Waynesburg and the family grew. Connie, now deceased, was born in 1943, Joan in 1945, Stephen in 1952, Loretta in 1953, Wanda in 1955, and Glenda in 1959. These were the years the children remember best, growing up on their parent’s 40-acre farm near Sycamore and going to Margaret Bell High School, where the scent of bread baking at Moore’s Bakery next door filled the air.
It was a working farm that fed a large family. “I milked my first cow there,” Lucille declared. “She was as big as a mountain!”
That’s where the nine loaves a week were baked, butter was churned, gardens were tended, and Lucille made the clothes for the family.
Kenneth’s job disappeared when Moore’s Bakery closed in 1967, but brother “Red” Tharp got him a job and the family moved to New Salem, Ohio.
When Kenneth retired in the late 1990s, the Tharps returned to Waynesburg and rented a home. Later, Kenneth moved to Rolling Meadows Nursing Home and Lucille to Thompson Gardens. A family photo shows her and Kenneth renewing their vows at Rolling Meadows, along with several other couples. When Kenneth died in 2005, Lucille kept up her never-sit-down pace for the next decade or so until failing eyesight and hearing loss started slowing her down, Joan said.
I’ve returned a week after the big birthday party for the perfect photo of Lucille, wearing her birthday party dress, surrounded by balloons, and holding her birthday card covered with well wishes. Her face is one big smile.
Surrounded by a loving family and still singing every morning, Edna Lucille Conaway Tharp is 100 years old and cheerfully counting.
