One of Limestone’s oldest residents celebrated her 102nd birthday this week, marking another milestone in life lived simply but well.

Maudi Bice was born April 24, 1917, and spent most of her life in a town called Jones, about 18 miles from Selma. Electricity didn’t make it to her house until around the 1940s, she said, well after other parts of the country.

“We didn’t have but one telephone in the community, and that was in one of the stores,” Bice said. “If you wanted to call someone, you had to go to that store and talk to folks.”

Bice attended business college in Selma, where she said she “didn’t learn anything I could use now.” Instead, she studied dictation, shorthand and how to use a typewriter.

While many women put those skills to use as a secretary, Bice kept the knowledge and became Jones’ postmaster instead. She held the job for 27 years.

“Back in those days, there was a man from Selma that brought mail in bags,” Bice said. “He’d come and dump it out on the table, and he had two more post offices in that, so I’d have to sort through their mail to get mine.”

Once sorted, she’d put the mail in the appropriate post office box. While she worked with mail, her husband tended to their farm. Bice said he grew a lot of peanuts, and she never much got interested in the farming idea, though she did find a love for gardening and flowers in retirement.

Bice said she retired early because her husband had Parkinson’s disease. The couple had no kids of their own, so Bice was his primary caregiver.

They were married almost 60 years when he died. Bice said they had met in church, when he was but a stranger and she was one of several girls in church who thought he looked like a movie star.

“One Sunday night, there was somebody on the back seat that had never been there before,” she said. “… I wondered who he was, and he turned out to be my husband.”

Bice said she remarried when she was 80. It was a remarriage for him, too, as he had been previously married to one of Bice’s best friends. Bice and her second husband were married for nine years before he died.

After that, she was pretty much on her own. Her only sibling, a younger sister, also lived in Jones. Bice said her niece, Claudia Simpkins, began pressuring Bice’s sister to move to North Alabama, but her sister refused to leave Bice alone.

So, she moved to Limestone County. Her niece said it was a bit of a culture shock for Bice, but Bice has adapted well over the last 10 years. She joined Capshaw Baptist Church — the second church she has ever attended — and she enjoys spending Thursday nights as the grinning part of “pickin’ and grinnin’” in Ardmore as long as it isn’t raining.

“I’ve made a lot of friends there, good friends,” she said.

Living well

Bice said she never thought much about how to live to be 100. In fact, she said, she’s ready for the Lord to call her home.

But if she had to credit something, she said “it might be because I eat what you call ‘well.’” She added she’s always been interested in nutrition and studied to make sure she was eating right, even though “this American diet ain’t eating right.”

She also said her great-grandmother lived to be 103 years old. Whatever the reason, Bice doesn’t feel 102. Her vision and hearing aren’t as good as they used to be, but she didn’t get a hip replacement until she was 99 and only started daily medicines about six months ago, according to Simpkins.

Bice walks about the house freely, only complaining about the dust allergy that makes cleaning difficult and her inability to drive herself places.

“When you quit driving, you don’t do much,” she said. “… I miss that more than anything.”

Simpkins said that’s yet to stop Bice from driving a mean buggy through Walmart, though.

And while she’s certainly one of Limestone’s oldest, Bice doesn’t think she’s in the top spot.

“Oh, no, I don’t think that,” she said. “I think there’s somebody older than I am.”

Only time will tell.