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Alyx Chandler
Ann Rogers, who celebrated her 100th birthday this year, has spent most of her life in Homewood.
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Photo courtesy of Ann Rogers.
Left: Ann Rogers is pictured in front of her Southside apartment at age 23.
Seventy-two years ago, longtime Homewood resident Ann Rogers said all she could see when she opened her front door were dozens of roaming cows.
“Where I live now, this was the country, farmland. A man down the street had a cornfield, and after I moved here in 1946, there was a dairy farm house filled with dairy cows,” she said. “It was so amusing to me at the time.”
Back then, she said, 19th Ave. was just a dirt and cobblestone road where the city of Birmingham sent a water truck over once a week to water down the dusty roads. There was only a country store and a “little old gas station,” the Sterrett Avenue resident said, and a favorite lake of hers, the since dried up Edgewood Lake, whereSamford University now sits.
Ann Rogers, whose 100th birthday was on April 30, said that most people don’t believe she’s a centenarian.
“I don’t feel like I’m 100,” she laughed. “I’m a very active person, I do most anything I want to.”
Even as she developed arthritis at 94 years old, it still hasn’t slowed her down.
“I don’t ask anyone to do anything I can possibly do myself,” she said. “I drive my car, buy my groceries, I take care of myself and everything in my house.”
It was only recently that she hired a gardener to help her take care of her lawn and tend to her always well-kept flower beds and plants. Although it’s sad to give up caring for her yearly tomatoes and flower garden, she said she is just thanking God every day that she can still take care of herself.
“I mean, she’s always been independent,” said John Rogers, the one of her two sons who is still living. He added that she was widowed early in her life. “She took real good care of us, and she’s always taken real good care of herself all these years. As you can see, she’s going to be 100, and she’s still living just fine on her own.”
She has been living in Homewood for the last 72 years, and was born “an Alabama girl,” she said, in Blount County and graduated from Hayden High School. After that, she moved into the city of Birmingham, where she worked in the Pizitz Building doing cosmetology and hair styling.
“It was wonderful working there, Birmingham was such a great city, all the shopping, the lights at Christmas,” Ann Rogers said. “[Working there] was a dream, it’s hard for me to believe now.”
Before she moved to Birmingham permanently in 1946, Ann Rogers lived all over the U.S., including San Diego, California, which she said she loved most out of all places — all, that is, besides Alabama.
“Homewood is the greatest place to live in,” Ann Rogers said, “especially now with all the schools and churches. It’s the greatest place for families to live in. I wouldn’t live anywhere else but here.”
John Rogers said his mom grew up in the country with no electricity and no running water. Ann Rogers said she had to walk miles to get her education.
“The kids now don’t know how lucky they are [that] they got their cars — a 100 years ago we had to walk everywhere,” she laughed.
She said that she’s been going to Trinity United Methodist Church for about 60 years and used to be in charge of the ladies Bible study class. Now, she said, she’s the only one left out of the 100 people in the class.
She also said she loves fishing on lakes and deep sea fishing, even though she isn’t able to do it anymore.
“She taught me to be independent, to be resilient, to take the blows that life gives you and get back up and keep going,” John Rogers said, adding that she’s the strongest woman he knows.
Ann Rogers said now her family consists of her son, her daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Once a week, she said, John Rogers comes over to check on her.
Being 100 years old doesn’t bother her, Ann Rogers said.
“I’ve traveled and done all the fun things and been all around this planet,” Ann Rogers said. “The most wonderful thing in the world is being on this beautiful earth and being here with my son and family.”
