It is a major milestone for a friend of WKYC Channel 3 News.
Lona Collins, who Channel 3 News reported on when she turned 108, just had another birthday and turned 110.
It was an achievement on many levels.
When Lona was born, doctors did not believe she would live past 1, since she was sickly as a baby.
“And every day, the train threw ice off of the train in bags ‘for the sick little girl who wasn’t go make it,’” said her daughter, Lois Klemenc.
But Collins beat the odds. Married in 1926 at 19, she went on to become a great-great grandmother and even beat cancer twice.
She lived through two World Wars, as well as the inventions of both the television and the automobile, although she never had an interest in driving.
Two years ago she told Channel 3 News that the secret to longevity was “Don’t go crabbin’.” That quote landed her in Cosmopolitan Magazine.
Today her belief continues to be that one should never go complaining.
“Have a smile a little bit instead of begin crabby,” Collins said Tuesday. “It don’t get ‘ya anything.”
Though she is not getting around quite like she used to, she is still giving high-fives to friends at her assisted living center in Wickliffe who are decades younger.
“I’m thankful for everything I’ve got,” she said.
Her relatives are too.
“I like to tell people that if everybody had my grandmother for a grandmother, there would be no problems in the world. Everybody would get along,” granddaughter Chris Mikitin said.
The family believes Collins may now be the second-oldest person living in Ohio.