Mabel Palmer of Manchester will be celebrating her 100th birthday on Jan. 14 and recently sat down with the Defender to talk about all ofher memories. (Photo by Patricia Beech)

By Patricia Beech-

Mabel Palmer of Manchester is celebrating a milestone Monday, Jan. 14. She is turning 100 years old.
Born two months after World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, Palmer lived through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, and the threat of global annihilation during the decade’s long Cold War.
At age 100, she reflects a century of life with grace. Looking decades younger than her actual years, she admits to being surprised by her own longevity.
“I never thought I’d live to be 100,” she says. “It seemed like such a long while, but it isn’t, it’s really a very short amount of time.”
Palmer is quick to point out that they have been 100 good years.
“I’ve had a good life, and I don’t feel a bit different than I ever did,” she says. “I’ve always been blessed with good healtth and I’ve always sprung back from sickness.”
Longevity runs in Palmer’s family. Her mother passed just shy of 100 years.
Sitting in her tidy, comfortable living room surrounded by familiar objects and memorabilia collected over a lifetime, she says the secret to a long life is clean living.
“I never did smoke, I never did drink,” she says. “I never did anything wrong because my mother was strict and wouldn’t have it.”
Born on a farm in southern Adams County, Palmer grew up with her two sisters, Grace (who has passed) and 88-year-old Betty, with whom she now lives.
She attended a one-room country school through the eighth grade, but had to quit because she, being the oldest child, was needed at home.
She says the memories she most cherishes are of her childhood.
“I often think of the time we all lived with our parents,” she says. “They were wonderful years. Dad was a farmer and a trader who bought and sold cattle, so we lived pretty good, even though no one had money at that time, we were really blessed.”
Palmer met and married her husband Emory in 1935. Both worked full time jobs – she at a Maysville shoe factory, and he at an Aberdeen grocery store – until Emory came home one afternoon in the mid-1950’s and announced he’d purchased a business in Manchester.
Palmer says she was shocked.
Her sister Betty and her husband Harry had bought out Ralph Foster’s store on the corner of 136 and 52, and Emory was going into business with them.
“He wanted me to quit my job and come to work with him,” she recalls. “I told him, I don’t know anything about running a store, and he said ‘don’t worry about it – I’ll teach you what you need to know’.”
The four of them ran the store as a partnership until Harry decided to return to farming, leaving the Palmers as sole owners of the business.
The little corner store/gift shop was a focal point in the town of Manchester during the years when the now shuttered power plants were in the heyday of their operation.
“Talk about business,” says Palmer. “I knew half of Adams County, and all the power plant workers. They’d come down 52 and 136 and would stop at the store in the morning for breakfast and come back for a sandwich in the afternoon, we were busy all the time.”
Power plants employees were such frequent visitors they began cashing their paychecks at the store on Friday afternoons, requiring the Palmers to seek out a source to increase their cash on hand.
“They’d be lined up from the corner of the street waiting,” says Palmer. “Emory had to ask Kyle Wilson at the local bank if they would provide enough money for us to cash the checks, and they agreed to do that for him.”
The store was also where folks gathered to talk and share community happenings. Among them, Georgia Woolard, the late owner of the Manchester Signal, who Palmer called “a good friend”.
“Georgie was in and out of the store all the time,” says Palmer. “She’d come in to talk or she’d bring Emory macaroni salad. She used to make the best macaroni salad and I don’t know why I didn’t get her recipe.”
When Emory Palmer passed in 1994, Mable continued to run the business on her own.
After 51 years behind the counter, she reluctantly retired in 2008 at the age of 90.
“I still think about the business a lot,” she says. “I grieved over it for a long time, and when they tore down all the buildings on that lot, including my home, it just broke my heart. I couldn’t get it off my mind.”
These days Palmer looks forward to visits from relatives and friends, like Shayla Carter, who is also her home health aide.
Carter says she’s become very attached to Mrs. Palmer and her sister and doesn’t miss a chance to visit.
“I’m her homecare aide, but I’ve been coming here for so long she and Betty are more like friends and family to me,” she says. “I come every day because they’re both just amazing people.”
Mrs. Palmer plans to celebrate her 100th birthday quietly with just family and friends.