Life lived well, even at 108

In 1907, Teddy Roosevelt was president, the Lusitania made its first voyage across the Atlantic, and Rudyard Kipling won the Nobel Prize for literature. It’s also the year Consuelo Ramirez was born. She turns 108 on Christmas Eve.

“People ask me about my mother’s age. Her brother passed away when she was 101, and everyone in her family (except her father) were 100 or over,” said Daniel Ramirez, her youngest son.

Ramirez, who lives at Lakeview Village in Lenexa, has lived in the Kansas City area for most of her life but was born in Zamora, Mexico to family with indigenous Purépecha heritage. Her father died when she was 7, and at age 13, she moved with her mother and one of her brothers to Nebraska, where two other brothers already lived.

Daniel said his mother’s memories of life on a farm in Nebraska were full of days spent digging up potatoes and doing laundry outside in the cold.

“I said (to her), ‘What kind of toys did you have?’ She said, ‘I always had to work. I never had toys,’ ” Daniel said.

After Nebraska, Consuelo and her family came to Kansas City, Kan., where her mother ran a boarding house. She lived here for decades before becoming a citizen in 1982.

Even though she doesn’t have fond memories of her farm work in Nebraska, she has loved gardening her whole life. At a previous nursing home that had a garden, she loved to help plant bulbs — even though she was over 100 years old even then.

The nursing home staff “said she really got out there and didn’t want to come back in,” Daniel said. “She wanted to show them how — she likes to play the teacher.

As late as her 90s, she was in a dance group that performed at nursing homes in the area, and when she was 103, she still swam regularly.

She married her late husband, Jose, in Kansas City in 1928. Together, they had five sons and four daughters and adopted another son. Three of their sons have predeceased her.

She and her husband spent time singing, dancing and working in the garden.

“I would go out there, and you could hear them singing,” Daniel said.

They were also very religious and attended Catholic church every week. Consuelo still goes to church each week.

When he was growing up, Daniel remembered that his mom “was always in a great mood. She got mad at me once in my life. I said a curse word when I was hanging curtains. I was putting a nail in and hit myself.”

It didn’t matter that he was a grown man at that point — Consuelo wouldn’t tolerate swearing.

Daniel’s wife, Linda, said Consuelo has always been a loving and kind person. Consuelo lived with them for five years, until she was 105, and one day, Linda suddenly became ill.

“I remember being really sick, and here she was, 103 years old — she got me into bed and was putting blankets on me. Her strength was amazing,” Linda said.

On Saturday, various family members came to celebrate her 108^th birthday, with good wishes for another next year.

This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 9:29 AM with the headline "Life lived well, even at 108."