Born on May 24, 1909, Elizabeth Walke has experienced most of the 20th century’s milestones.
Her eyes sparkled as brightly as the candles announcing her 109th birthday as family and friends gathered Saturday to sing "Happy Birthday" to Elizabeth McDonald Walke.
Coming from near and far, cameras clicked for their beloved friend in the piano lounge at Sabal Palms Assisted Living facility in Palm Coast as she gently blew out the candles.
Buffles may be the last remaining of her siblings born in the 1900s but those in attendance, including nephews Stanley Durkee from Bethesda, Maryland and Donald Durkee and wife, Liliana, of Palm Coast, were all happy to share their memories of Walke and her adventures.
Born May 24, 1909, Walke lived a life of travel, music, dance and love while experiencing most of the 20th century’s milestones — from riding in one of the earliest cars (a Maxwell) to the installation of her family's first telephone.
“It rang so much and my mother had it taken out — it was an interruption of the family and privacy,” Walke said about the phone. “The Maxwell was quite a car.”
Growing up in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, Walke recalled a year spent with her grandmother in Boston at the age of 11 as "extraordinary," going to the opera, ballet and museums. Walke has traveled the world, recalling a trip to Europe in 1939 with her parents by boat and leaving in August, one month before Hitler invaded Poland in September.
“My year in Boston was wonderful because my grandmother took me everywhere and explained everything to me, so I appreciated what I saw,” Walke said.
Her father, Henry McDonald, was president of Storer College in Harpers Ferry — a college established in 1865 to educate freed slaves, from 1899-1944. With her mother in the field of education as well, Walke was inspired to become a teacher after her graduation from Hillsdale College in Michigan, where her grandfather George Mosher, who served in the German consulate, was president in years preceding her arrival.
Settling down with her husband, Navy Commander Richard Walke, Elizabeth gave birth to her daughter, Sali Walke, in New York before the family moved to Alexandria, Virginia. After the passing of her husband in 1960, Elizabeth and Sali moved to Maine in 1978 near where she had spent summers as a child in Ocean Park, making many friends, especially through their church.
The rich history of Walke’s life is not lost on her companions Polly Abaroa and Sharon Sosa, who visit her often, and the pair recounted stories shared over the years, including those of recovered Civil War shells and a live cannon ball found on a field near Harpers Ferry.
“We’d go out after the rains and just dig around and one of them was a cannon ball that had not been exploded, so we took all of that stuff down to (a museum) outside of Alexandria," Walke recalled. "I wrapped that big ball up and the man came out and he said — it’s a wonder the person who carried that ball didn’t explode. I had that big cannon ball in my lap.”
Though it was Sali that brought Sosa and Abaroa into Walkes’ life, with Sali's passing in March, the friends are as close as ever.
“We’ve loved hearing the stories for years and years,” said Sosa. “We traveled in March to Harpers Ferry to see where her family was and were she ran and played — that was wonderful. Our families have just adopted each other.”
“We’re really very honored to be able to join her, and thanks to David and Sharon Sosa to have this great celebration,” said Stanley Durkee, a nephew of the centenarian. “There are many adventures we had through life and my mother and her were exceptionally close siblings. They went to school together, just a year apart, they were on the radio together as the McDonald Sisters singing. We used to go to the Antietam Battlefield and search for bullets in the cornfields.
"Good memories.”