Viola Brown Brown turned 110 on October 4, 2021. | Clark County, Virginia.
At 110 years of age, one Christian mother and former Church treasurer for 34 years says she has survived the worst events in history because of God.
Roberts Lampkin Brown, a United States citizen born on Oct. 4, 1911, revealed during her birthday celebrations in Berryville, Virginia last week that God is the source of her longevity.
According to the Gerontology Research Group, there are only 17 people in the world who have been verified as older than Brown, and all of them are women.
“He [God] wakes me up in the morning. He tells me what to do. I don’t worry about things,” Brown said in an exclusive interview with The Christian Post (CP).
Roberts Lampkin Brown revealed that she has outlived two of her husbands — a deacon and a pastor — as well as one of her two children.
Brown’s nephew, Andrew Roberts, spoke to media saying, “there’s never one minute that Jesus doesn’t drip off her lips.”
“It’s as if she embodies Him. Everything she talks about and does, she gives honor and praise to God. I mean everything. She’s a literal [believer],” Roberts told The Christian Post.
Adding: “I think one of the things, in terms of her longevity, has to do with her faith. The lifestyle [she practices]. She doesn’t let a lot of things bother her. She has great capacity either to tolerate stress or just kind of eliminate it for the most part because she is centered. She’s centered on something greater than herself.”
Andrew Roberts, along with Brown’s 79-year-old daughter, Vonceil Hill, her only living child (she had two), agree that her faith kept her in such perfect peace, she never needed prescription drugs until she was 101.
“She never took any prescribed medication until she was 101,” Hill explained. “They put her on a low dose [medication] for high blood pressure.”
Hill noted during her interview with CP that whatever her mother wants from God, she has witnessed her getting them through prayer.
“She asks God for things and usually it happens,” Hill said. “She prays with some people who are sick [and they get better].”
According to the Christian Post, Brown is a member of Zion Baptist Church of Berryville, which sits along Josephine Street in the historically black section of the town now known as the Josephine City Historic District. Her house also sits along Josephine Street and is less than a five-minute walk from the church.
Since the pandemic, the Christian Post reports that she hasn’t spent much time in person with her congregation.
Hill said her mother was very active in the church during her younger years.
“We were in church from morning till night. She organized the Sunday school up there. She used to knock on everyone’s door who had children and asked if she could pick up their children or somebody from the church could pick up their children,” Hill said. “She was one of the deaconesses of the church; she was the treasurer for 34 years. But she’s been a great mentor. I believe that you need God in your life in order to get through the day.”
Brown loves to talk about her favorite Scripture: Psalm 27.
“She talks about the 27th Psalm. That’s her favorite,” said Roberts. “The impact of her is the embodiment of love, even though we fall short. It’s that spirit that keeps you going because she’s always going to remind you. Whether it’s obvious or overt, it’s just who she is. You automatically feel good when you’re around her. She’s got that positive energy, that spirit-filled energy.”
When the “Titanic” sank into the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, she was just an infant. She was not yet 3 when World War I began. She was still 6 when the Flu pandemic started in February 1918. And by the time she was 7, Brown was working as a domestic with her family in Clarke County, Virginia, and would spend decades living through segregation.
News Agencies contributed to this report.
