Bettie Wilson, who will turn 100 years old on Aug. 6, poses at her daughter’s home in North Las Vegas Friday, Aug. 2, 2019.
Saturday, Aug. 3, 2019 | 2 a.m.
Bettie Wilson’s 100th birthday is bringing together six generations of family members this weekend to Las Vegas. Many are wearing shirts proclaiming, “100 years young.”
All are singing Wilson’s praises.
Her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and others revere her as the guiding light of the family. They practice the values in education, faith and hard work that she’s instilled in them at an early age.
“She had this thing about education and godliness,” grandson Johnnie Steele said. “She demanded that from us. The way kids get in trouble in school today? No way, not with her. There was a cost to be paid.”
Wilson was born on Aug. 6, 1919, in Epps, La., and was raised in Eudora, Ark., in a family of sharecroppers — when a tenant cultivates farmland and gives up part of their crop as rent.
It was difficult growing up in the South during times of heavy racial tension. That’s why education was so important to Wilson, and something she stressed for her children so they could have a better life.
Daughter Cleotha Collins, 86, says her mother is a devout Southern Baptist who attends church on Sundays and loves baking. Collins, who inherited these traits, also regularly attends church and loves baking, especially Southern tea cakes.
“It’s a different world today,” Collins said. “We didn’t carry guns. We kept our family like it should be: learn and go to school.”
Collins and Steele joked that the only “gang” anyone had to worry about was Wilson.
“You would have wished she was a gang by the time she was finished with you,” she said.
The house wasn’t always ruled with an iron fist, however. Collins remembers times when her mother would stay up all night and care for her whenever she got sick.
“That’s what we did in the olden days until we were able to have access to doctors and hospitals,” she said.
Collins reminisced about her mother in the kitchen of her home in North Las Vegas. The kitchen is crowded with the influx of family members visiting, but cozy with family photos, Bible verses and portraits of the Obamas hanging on the walls and refrigerator.
In the other room, relatives gather around Wilson, who in her old age is confined to a wheelchair, limited in her speech and has dementia. They proudly show Wilson the shirts they made in her honor. On the shirt is a photo of Wilson in a blue church hat that reads: “100 YEARS YOUNG.”
Collins moved her mother to North Las Vegas from Arkansas when she could no longer care for herself. Wilson now resides at Life Care Center of Las Vegas, a long-term facility for those with Alzheimer’s and dementia, where she is gets visits from family members at least three days a week.
Collins said she feels blessed that she was able to raise her children the way her mother raised her.
“I’m grateful the way my kids came up,” she said. “It’s the values she instilled in us.”
