Taken from the Baltimore Sun newspaper July 24, 1948 concerning Julia Rodgers

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A TOUCH OF LIPSTICK FOR A 'GIRL' OF 102

When a woman gets to be 102 years old and is the mother of a 75-year-old daughter ant two sons in their sixties, she occasionally feels the need of a touch of lipstick.

Mrs. Julia Rodgers, possibly the oldest woman in Maryland, will be 102 tomorrow. To have her birthday picture taken, she had her nurse put some lipstick on her, the first she had ever worn.

Sitting in her wheel chair at the Rev. A. Opitz Home in Catonsville, looking like a soft, faded daguerreotype, she said briskly to the photographer: "You aren't going to take a picture of this ugly mug, are you?"

But She Was Ready

But before anybody would have a chance to change his mind about taking her picture, she flattened the collar of her blue dress and preened for the camera. She even pointed to one side of her face as the more photogenic side. "People tell me I used to be right pretty." She said, "My hair used to be brown and my eyes were blue. My eyes aren't so blue anymore, and my hair is all straight. "I live so long because I'm from farming people," she said. "Farmers get to be real old. That's because they work so shard and are outdoors." (Mrs. Rodgers had two brother who lived to be over 90 and a sister who lived to be 85.)

The daughter of Sarah and Peter Wilhelm, of Freeland, Md., she lived on a farm there until she married Benjamin Franklin Rodgers, whose family were neighbors.

Husband in Civil War

Although Mrs. Rodgers loved life on a farm, her husband did not. Five years after the Civil War, during which Mr. Rodgers fought for the North, the Rodgers were married and left Freeland for Marrimans Lane, Hampden.

"Benjamin didn't like planting so he took to bricklaying," Mrs. Rodgers said. "He liked city life." The Rodgers spend all their married life in Hampden. Here their children were born, reared and married. In 1918, Mr. Rodgers died and Mrs. Rodgers went to Reidsville to live with there daughter, Mrs. Susan Kailer.

Eighteen years later Mrs. Kailer's husband died and the mother and daughter came back to Baltimore. For many years after her return to Baltimore she live at the home of her son, Roy Rodgers, 832 West Thirty-fourth street. Two years ago she moved to the Opitz home.

A Sociable Soal

There she is known affectionately as Grandma and, though she is deaf and unable to walk, she is a sociable soul, usually found in the middle of a group of friends, beaming on one and all.

She gets up early and refuses to go to be until 9 o'clock. When the "girls" as she calls her three roommates, in their sixties, all had colds recently, she was proud of the fact that she didn't have a sniffle. Also proud of being one of the oldest women in Maryland, if not the oldest, she remembers vividly her one hundredth birthday, when she ate ice cream and cake and wore an orchid.

Has A Sweet Tooth

"Those children of mine had better bring me lots of ice cream and candy tomorrow," she said. "I have a terrible sweet tooth." "Those children," Mrs. Kailer, who now live at 730 West Thirty-sixth street, and Calvin Rodgers, 63, Mrs. Rodgers' "baby," who lives at 4406 Falls road, will be at the Opitz Home tomorrow to celebrate the birthday.

Only her son, Roy, who is a patient at the West Baltimore General Hospital, will be missing. However, a good number of her seven grandchildren and ten great grandchildren will be there to help bridge the absence of Roy.

Despite the efforts of Mrs. Rodger's relatives to divert her, the demure, wistful, white-haired 102 year old woman will probably say snappily:

"Stop trying to fool me. I know Roy isn't here. Give me some more ice cream."