John Humphrey, 100
Sage advice: “Avoid the cities, except when you have to work in them and such, and get plenty of outdoor living for the atmosphere and the exercise.”
Amanda “Granny Ray” Witherspoon Bowers, 100
Bowers lives just a mile or so from where she was born, and notes with pride that she’s never strayed far from her mountain community of Jefferson.
Nora Percival, 102
Russian-born and Bronx-raised, Percival has lived in Watauga County for the past 28 years and has enough stories to write three memoirs—which is exactly what she did after a career in editing and publishing.
Conlee “Toots” Hall, 100
What’s surprising about me: “My nickname, Toots, came from my daddy, who called me ‘little tot.’ He got killed in a coal bed in West Virginia when I was five years old.”
Mae Phillips, 104
Sage advice: “Have kids—that’s what keeps the wheel a’rollin’. If there wasn’t no kids, there wouldn’t be no old people before very long, you know it?”
