The weather didn’t cooperate, but Rose Harris, Pittsburg, still enjoyed her 110th birthday.
“The weather was so bad — she just couldn’t get out no kind of way in this weather,” said Patricia Swinney, great-niece.
Instead, some family members and friends by with cards and a cake. “She got a bunch of cards, and she enjoyed the cake,” Swinney said.
Harris, affectionately known as “Aunt Rosie” and “Mother Rose,” also received a birthday call from U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, who has admired and respected her for years. “The senator has been to see her many times,” Swinney said.
The daughter of the late Lott and Margaret Shaw Miller, Harris was born Jan. 30, 1900, in Yale, just east of the current location of Chicken Mary’s. Her father, a former elementary school teacher, worked at No. 2 Mine for the Western Coal Co. There were 10 children in the family. Harris’ last living sibling died at 106 a year or so ago, and she went with relatives by car to attend the funeral in Denver, Colo.
She is living proof that hard work never hurt anyone. Harris’ mother died when she was 11, and much of the work at home fell to her. She did housework and maid work most of her life, including many years at the Benage home in Pittsburg, helping to raise John Benage, who became a prominent Fort Scott physician.
Harris is a devoted member of the Lighthouse Temple Church of God in Christ, attends services faithfully when weather permits and still speaks in church to give her testimony when she feels moved to do so.
She was married twice, to William Allen and Walter Harris. They are both deceased, along with her only child, a son who died in 1990. Relatives include Swinney, nieces Juanita Gilmore and Darlene Lomax, and another great-niece, Renee Lomax, all of whom look after Harris and helped her celebrate her 110th birthday.
“We feel blessed that we still have her,” Swinney said.
