MANTUA − Ethelyn VonHelmers Fitzsimmons was born during World War I, just days after Babe Ruth hit the first home run of his career.
Today, Ethelyn VonHelmers Fitzsimmons is still living independently in her own home as she prepares to celebrate her 110th birthday on May 17. The big day will be marked by a quiet celebration with a friend.
She is among only a few Ohioans who have reached that milestone. Another woman, Emma Kmet, celebrated her 110th birthday in February at Altenheim Senior Living in Strongsville. She is still living, a staff member there said.
Local historians and friends are asking supporters to “shower” Fitzsimmons with birthday cards to mark the occasion. Although she reports some issues with her eyesight, she can read the cards using a magnifying glass and a computer monitor that makes type bigger.
“Ethelyn Fitzsimmons will be 110 years old on May 17th,” reads a post on the Mantua Historical Society & Museum’s Facebook page. “She still gets around, is very sharp. Let’s ‘shower’ her with birthday cards! Her address is PO Box 493, Mantua OH 44255.”
Fitzsimmons sat down this week with Ron Kotkowski, president of Shalersville Historical Society, and Dottie Summerlin, president of Mantua Historical Society, to discuss historical events she’s witnessed during her lifetime. Kotkowski, like Fitzsimmons a parishioner at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Mantua, has been spreading the word about the birthday card drive.
Fitzsimmons said she prepares her own breakfast and gets around without assistance at the house she’s lived in since 1955. She still climbs the steps to her bedroom every night.
“I’m doing the same things I’ve always done,” she said. “I’m eating the same things I’ve always eaten.”
Early life in Marietta
Ethelyn VonHelmers was born May 17, 1915, in Marietta, the daughter of Herman VonHelmers and Lucille Boothby VonHelmers. She was an only child. Fitzsimmons said her parents separated six months after she was born, and eventually divorced.
Her birth father wasn’t a big presence in her life. She remembers meeting him, a German immigrant, and not liking him very much.
Her mother eventually remarried to Clyde Timblin, a reporter for the Marietta Times. The newspaper reported the events of the day, big and small, including her parents’ divorce.
She was born a year after World War I started in Europe. The United States entered the conflict, then called The Great War, in 1917, and the war ended a year later, when Ethelyn was about 3.
When she was small child, she remembers her town had a big parade. She saw soldiers who had come home dressed in khaki uniforms and women crying.
“I asked my mother why they were crying,” she said. “She told me they had lost sons.”
Ethelyn, who attended school in a one-room schoolhouse, earned a scholarship to Marietta College and graduated with honors. Her short stories were published in the college’s literary magazine, including the tales of a young mouse.
She studied to be a teacher but never entered the classroom. Doctors at the time told her she had a heart condition and expressed concern that she would be too frail to teach.
“That’s why I don’t believe anything the doctors say now,” the 109-year-old said this week.
Moving to Akron
In her late 20s, while World War II was raging, she moved to Akron with a friend who took a job as a lab technician at Green Cross Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, now Western Reserve Hospital.
Her friend “enticed me away from home.” She got a job there too, working as a medical secretary for an osteopathic doctor.
While osteopathic physicians these days are part of the medical mainstream, Fitzsimmons said that during her early days “they were considered quacks.”
After the war ended, she met James Paul Fitzsimmons on a blind date. “Bud” had served as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the war. She recalls that after the date, he didn’t call her for a year, then dated her for two years before finally deciding to marry her. She was 36 at the time. The couple never had children.
“He had other girlfriends,” she said. “I never expected to hear from him again.”
Her husband was a mail carrier for the Kent Post Office, and had a second job at the racetrack in Cleveland, so in 1955 they bought their home in Mantua, the halfway point between the two jobs. Her husband, she said, liked his job at the horse track better than his post office job.
With no children to raise, Mrs. Fitzsimmons kept working. She took a job at Kent State University, where she was a secretary in the president’s office. She worked there 19 and a half years under three KSU presidents − George Bowman, Robert White and Glenn Olds. Her tenure included the May 4, 1970, shooting at KSU, when White was at the helm of the university.
She didn’t learn to drive until she was in her mid-40s, taking a driving test along with a group of university wives at KSU. Fitzsimmons recalls that she was the only one who passed the test.
“I had an old Chevy,” she said. “I loved that car.”
James Fitzsimmons died Nov. 18, 1979, at age 63. She remained in their home, where her mother, Lucille, had moved.
“I had a dog and I had a mother,” she said. Her mother, who died in 1988 at 91, also navigated the steps until she died.
While she said her eyesight has diminished with age, she said there’s an advantage to remaining in the home.
“I can get around in the dark,” she said.
Her creative side
Fitzsimmons said she explored her passions of painting, writing and music well into adulthood. She taught piano for many years, and her former pupils, many of them in their 80s, still come to visit her.
A baby grand piano sits in her home, but she doesn’t play anymore. It’s not because she has physical problems. It no longer holds a tune.
She has painted extensively, including an oil painting of her mother. She also wrote songs and poems.
One poem, which she describes as one of her favorites, tells the story of star-crossed love
There is a path I take where roses grow –
The stones are worn and lead no place at all
Then, somehow, with each step I always know
That you are close beside me, dark and tall
I go there solely to encounter you
And hope to find a firm and spacious ground
Where birds from spring and skies of vivid blue
May add loud notes to waning autumn sounds
It is a tragic moment that I hold,
One destined to become a song unsung
Or fragile star-crossed dream, for I am old
And now aware that love is ever young
Give me the strength to walk another way
To let you go while I would have you stay.
When asked who the poem was about, Fitzsimmons said it was “certainly not” about her husband.
“There are many times in your life,” she said. “Don’t you know that?”
Secret to long life? She isn’t sure
Fitzsimmons said it’s a mystery why she has lived as long as she has. While her mother lived to be 91, most other family members and friends died much younger. She has only one living member of her extended family, a cousin in her 70s who lives in Nova Scotia. They keep in touch.
“When I was young, you died in your 70s, and in a rare case, your 80s,” she said.
Fitzsimmons was diagnosed with diabetes in 1964. But two years ago, she stopped taking her diabetes medication, and her heart medication, reasoning that she has lived long enough. Friends told her that she appeared to be less swollen than she was previously.
“I still enjoy my friends,” she said. “I can still carry on a conversation.”
She rarely leaves her home, but has agreed to let a friend take her to lunch for her birthday. She said she doesn’t want a big deal made out of the day, and doesn’t see herself as special.
She said she’s still content in the home she and her husband moved into 70 years ago.
“I’ve lived a very contented life here,” she said. “I feel safe.”
Reporter Diane Smith, who is half the age of this amazing woman she was honored to meet, can be reached at dsmith@recordpub.com.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: World wars, piano and poetry: Mantua woman to celebrate 110th birthday
Reporting by Diane Smith, Ravenna Record-Courier / Record-Courier
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