A Houston woman named Pinkie Cooper has just become a centenarian.
The mother of 15 has lived through a wide range of experiences, including six of her own children and 31 of her brothers and sisters passing before her, with her being the last of her parents’ children to survive.
Cooper joins an elite group of more than 90,000 human beings that have seen the country change in leaps and bounds, living past the ripe age of 100.
Her many loved ones and friends threw a 100th birthday party to celebrate her glorious life, and one of the questions guests attending wanted to know about was her secret to longevity.
One question was, “What do you eat?” She replied, “I eat oatmeal and I love vegetables.”
“Do you smoke?”
“No, never smoked,” she shot back.
Someone asked her if she drank, and she said, “sometimes,” which prompted someone to ask what she drank, to which Cooper answered, “whiskey.”
“Is that the secret?” the person probed, and with a laugh, she said “no” to the individual.
Occasional drinking is not the only thing that Cooper enjoys. She loves to wear lipstick every day, with red lipstick being her favorite. She also loves to press her luck, saying, “I love gambling.”
Cooper, who has more than 20 grandchildren and at least 30 great-grandchildren, according to ABC 13, has a life that is like a walking history book. She has seen the invention of so many things, such as the color television, the start of the internet and ultimately the creation of electric cars. She’s twice the age of hip-hop culture, which is celebrating its 50th year on Aug. 11.
Unlike other seniors, even those as young as 62, she is very snappy with technology. The 100-year-old loves her cellphone.
“I think they’re great because you can talk to people, you know, far away,” she said, adding, “Plus you can see them right on the TV, on the cellphone. I think it’s great!”
“I just play games. I don’t know how they do all that other fancy stuff.”
While she loves her cell, she adores her iPad.
“I look on Facebook, and then I play games,” she said. “I love to play games. And plus, I think it helps my mind.”
Cooper said she was especially proud of voting for and seeing Barack Obama become the first African-American president. She said it was one of the highlights of her life.
Born and raised in the deep South, during the shadow of Jim Crow and the ugliness of the Ku Klux Klan, she never thought she would witness such a marker of progress.
“I was just wishing a lot of my siblings could have seen this and been here to see it too,” she said.
