Only a few of the residents at Trinity Place Personal Care wore costumes at its Halloween party Thursday afternoon, but you better believe Myrtle Waldrop was one of them.
“I love Halloween,” she said softly. “I always have.”
For Miss Myrtle, “always” covers almost a century. She is 98 years old.
She was sitting in the dining room, enjoying a visit from her niece, Martha Waller, who had driven down from Amory to join the festivities. At any given time, 20 or so of the 57 residents sat in the dining room, nibbled on snacks provided by the Lowndes County Republican Women, listened to music that played through the P.A. system and chatted among themselves.
“I like everything about Halloween,” Waldrop said, as lights blinked from her wig, which appeared to be something like a Medusa, although Waldrop wasn’t entirely sure.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Do you like it?”
The consensus was yes. Waldrop won the prize for “Best Costume.”
She also won the prize for “Sweetest Resident.”
Neither was much of a surprise.
“She’s just the sweetest person,” Waller said. “She’s been that way all her life. She spent most of her life in Greenwood Springs, Alabama, in a house on a hill. It was the place all the kids went. She’d make popcorn balls for them or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Everybody just loved her.”
Waldrop likely inherited that sense of joy from her mom, who never wasted an opportunity to have fun.
“On Halloween, oh, we did everything,” she said. “We had so much fun.”
As a child growing up on a farm near Reform, Alabama, Waldrop said store-bought candy that is now a staple of Halloween was a rarity. Instead, her mother made the candy she would distribute each Halloween.
“Mama would be in the kitchen, making candy and she would squirt stuff all over the floor, all over the place,” Waldrop remembered. “She didn’t care. She was having fun. Daddy would try to help her, but he couldn’t stand the mess.”
Across the way, Madge Ivie, 88, sat along the wall, visiting with Elaine Smith. Smith is a caregiver for one of the residents, Mary Ann Cole, who was napping, so she sat with Ivie and the two watched the scene before them.
Miss Madge didn’t bother to wear a costume, though. It was never much of a part of her Halloween celebrations when she was growing up in Monroe County, she said.
“We didn’t really dress up all that much,” she said. “But we did have fun. You know what we did? We went around to all the houses and soaped the windows. That was the thing back then. That was the fun part.”
Smith seemed to enjoy the festivities as much, if not more, than the residents.
“They’re just wonderful,” she said. “I’m a caregiver for just one of the ladies, but I have to tell you, they’re all just as sweet as they can be.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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