PLATTSBURGH — On the 12th of November, Eileen Sellers celebrated her 100th birthday with a white creme cake at the Samuel F. Vilas Home in Plattsburgh.
Some of her family members came to visit her a few days before.
Her story began in Wildwood, near Colton in St. Lawrence County, the eldest child in a family of seven of John and Mary Lavine.
“We lived on a farm,” Eileen said.
“We didn’t live in the village.”
Eileen attended a one-room schoolhouse, where she “got a good education.”
“I went through high school (Colton High School), and one year of college, too, at Potsdam, studied everything,” she said.
Dancing was a favorite pastime in her Uncle Bill’s dance hall.
“He built it for that, and he had dances every week,” she said.
“His daughter was the age of me and my sister so we used to go there and dance. We would dance Saturday afternoons. It got so that the boys from South Colton would come down and dance, dance, dance. Then we would dance again on Sunday. Oh, we danced. We were good dancers. I guess they call them round dances, but we did all kinds of dancing.”
They danced to live music and recordings in heels, of course, and most definitely Patsy Cline.
“Back then, wasn’t that long ago,” she said.
Eileen met Benjamin Sellers through her parents, who were neighbors.
They were married by a priest at St. Mary’s Church.
“I suppose like everybody when you get married, your life is not the same,” she said.
“Probably, that’s the biggest change.”
The Sellers stayed up in Colton awhile.
Benjamin owned his own automotive body shop.
“He made them look like new,” she said.
A homemaker, Eileen had eight children.
“I had plenty to do at home,” she said.
These days, she likes to paint pictures.
A singer, she likes music. And, she still likes to dance.
Eileen has a lot of grandchildren and probably about 25 great-grandchildren.
Asked what her philosophy on life was:
“Just live everyday,” she said.