At Addolorata Villa in northwest suburban Wheeling, seven residents have lived a century.
Some, like Cecilia Pedtke, have even surpassed it. She’s 106 years old.
The centenarians were recently honored during a celebratory mass. Watch the video here.
Peter Lococo attributes “good genes” to his 100-year run. “And being lucky,” he said. “I went through WWII and North Africa and South Pacific and never heard a shot fired.”
“And I’m Irish, and I never tell my age,” Laverne Washburne said. At 101 years old, she makes her own rules.
“Sometimes I think, ‘Gee whiz, Lord what else am I going to have to face in my life?’” Clara Antram, 100, said.
But what the collective group does know is an honest answer to what it feels like to live so long.
“It’s rather boring to be honest with you it’s the same routine every day,” Lococo said.
“It feels great,” Stephanie Ziemba, 100, said. “I have my faculties. I’m not in diapers.”
There was no magic pill or revolutionary medical treatment. What got them this far? From the 1920s to today?
“Eating good and behaving myself,” Marge Wehlage, 101, said.
They say faith also had something to do with it. “And I ask God to keep my mouth shut when it should be shut,” Ziemba said.
“I never want to say the wrong thing to hurt someone’s feelings because even if you say you are sorry they’ll always remember what you said.”
A lesson in kindness in a world not so kind. “Be nice to each other and help each other,” Alice Racansky, 100, said.
“Just love your children, be good to them,” Ziemba said. “Try to be happy,” Pedtke said.
“Try to do things to make you happy.”
Sometimes it’s that simple.
“Just take life as it comes. Don’t sweat the details,” Lococo said.
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