At 110, Viola Brown credits faith for helping her through wars, pandemics and segregation.
Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown has survived the worst of times.
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.
Brown, who was born on Oct. 4, 1911, survived it all to celebrate her 110th birthday on Monday, and even though she is now one of the oldest people in the world and is unvaccinated, she’s trusting in God to keep her through the COVID-19 pandemic, the deadliest disease event in U.S. history.
Her birthday on Monday pushed her into an exclusive club of older adults who are at least 110 years old, known as supercentenarians. And she credits her faith in God as the source of her longevity.
“He wakes me up in the morning. He tells me what to do. I don’t worry about things,” Brown said in a late evening interview with The Christian Post from her home in Berryville, Virginia, where she outlived two husbands — a deacon and a pastor — as well as her son.
There are only 17 people in the world who have been verified as older than Brown, according to the Gerontology Research Group, and all of them are women. That’s why The Clarke County Board of Supervisors proclaimed Oct. 4 as Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown Day.
“Over the course of more than a century, Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown has witnessed Clarke County's progress and growth, which reflects the growth of our nation, and she has made extraordinary memories that are woven into her unique narrative of American history,” the proclamation signed by Board Chairman David Weiss said. “Centenarian Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown, who still lives in her Josephine Street home where she maintains a daily routine that includes spiritual reflection, now joins a small but extraordinary group of individuals known as supercentenarians.”
Brown’s nephew, Andrew Roberts, who adores his great-aunt for her infectiously inspiring lifestyle, says he, too, believes her longevity stems in part from her exemplary life of faith, which he compares to the “saints.”
“My personal experience has been nothing but love and joy whenever I’m in her presence. 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 CP.
“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,” he added.
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 in an interview with CP. “They put her on a low dose [medication] for high blood pressure.”
Before that, Brown lived on a steady diet of Scripture, and food including green beans, potatoes and tomatoes she grew in a garden she tended until she was about 100. CP.
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