100th birthday: Leap year baby has celebrated many ‘fake birthdays’
Ruth Henry has enjoyed a lot of fake birthday cakes in her 100 years on Earth.
Henry, of Freeport, was born Feb. 29, 1924, in South Buffalo Township, Armstrong County, which was an event that has forevermore labeled her a “leap year baby.”
On Thursday, Henry will celebrate her 100th birthday on another leap day.
But her mother never skipped her annual celebration just because the date didn’t exist.
“My mother always baked a birthday cake and put candles on it either the day before or the day after,” Henry said of birthdays on non-leap years. “I never thought too much about it.”
She first realized her birthday was something special when, at age 4, she was visited by a reporter from the Kittanning Leader Times, who took her picture for the newspaper. Also that year, a local bank gifted her with four gold coins.
“As I got older, people would mention it to me all the time,” Henry said of her unusual birthdate. “It didn’t really matter much to me.”
Henry began first grade at age 5, when she attended Iseman School, a one-room school in Armstrong County that educated students in first through eighth grades.
She recalled a big, coal stove in the center of the room that kept students warm on wintry days, and the teacher sending the older students to get a few buckets of water from a nearby farm that were dumped into a crock in the classroom.
The crock had a spigot, and each student was assigned a tin cup to place under the spigot to get a drink of water. The tin cups were lined up on a shelf with the water crock.
Henry, then Ruth Mainhart, hesitates to mention that she had indoor plumbing at home, but faced the elements to access the outdoor facilities at school.
After graduating in 1941 from Kittanning High School, Henry got a job in the produce department at Streamline Market in Kittanning, where she earned $2 per day for seven hours of work.
For fun, Henry played softball, went on hikes and swam in the creek with her friends and Robert Henry, her high school sweetheart. The two married in 1942.
“Then the war was coming,” Henry said.
Robert was drafted by the Army and served in the South Pacific Theater in World War II as the driver of an amphibious vehicle bringing Australian troops into battle.
Ruth accompanied her husband on most of his stateside assignments, and once he shipped out, waited patiently in Freeport for him to return home.
“He kept calling and saying ‘I’ll be home for Christmas,’” she said, “and finally, here he comes, on the late train.”
She remembers the moment he stepped off the train in Laneville, near the bridge over the Allegheny River.
“I was surprised he had lost so much weight,” Ruth said.
The couple had four children, Shirley, Don and twins Jane and Jean. She now has 6 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Jean now lives with her mother to help her with anything she needs.
Henry’s oldest child, Shirley, is 80 years old.
Henry enjoyed volunteering with Meals on Wheels, crafting, sewing, quilting, bowling on a women’s league each week for 30 years, and taking motor coach trips with her husband or friends.
“I just went through 100 years being happy,” she said. “I had a good life.”
She said she doesn’t really have a secret to longevity, but suspects her lifelong positive attitude has figured into the three digits in her age.
“I’ve got a lot of aches and pains, but I’ve had a good life because of family and friends,” Henry said.
