New Community Corporation - Still Funny & Fiesty at 107

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Family Back on Their Feet

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When Adam and Tia Natal look back over the past few years, they marvel that their life has taken them on a journey from homelessness to basically living the American dream.

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Still Funny & Fiesty at 107

Ask Louise Fuller her age and she wastes no time getting to the point. “Waaaaay over 100,” she told a recent visitor who inquired.

If you want to get really specific, she was born on September 13, 1902, which makes her 107 years old. Fuller was by far the oldest resident of New Community’s Extended Care Center, which is where she was interviewed last month. The amazing thing is Fuller was just passing through.

She underwent rehabilitation following a fall over the Christmas holidays and has since returned home to her senior community in Newark’s West Ward.

“I get up when I want to and go to bed when I want to,” she said.

“I think she’s amazing,” said her physical therapist, Bettina Nisbett of Tender Touch, the company providing Extended Care’s rehabilitation services. “Everything she did, she was motivated to do it and wanted to do even more.”At 107, Louise Fuller can still get around her Newark apartment with a walker. She has the assistance of a homemaker a few times a week, as well as support from grandchildren, who cook her meals.

Aside from the fact Fuller is hard of hearing---one has to really get close if you expect a reply---she shows no other signs of having been on this earth for more than a century. “I just thank the Lord I’m here,” she says, attributing her longevity to three things-- “praying, singing, and treating people right.”

“She’s a strong old lady, that’s all I have to say,” adds one of her granddaughters, Rosalyn Fuller, 68.

Geriatric experts point to a growing trend of more centenarians being medically fit enough to spend their final years in the familiar surroundings of their homes, often supported by services such as home health care and home-delivered meals.

“Health care advances in treatment and prevention have contributed to this shift that will become more dramatic as the current baby boomers move into their senior years,” noted Keela A. Herr, a board member of the American Geriatrics Society and professor and chair of Adult and Gerontology at the University of Iowa’s College of Nursing.

Born in Edison Ga., Fuller was raised on a farm, along with one sister, where she recalls picking corn, cotton and watermelon. Just thinking of those days seems to make her weary. “My farm days are over,” she said emphatically.

She came to New Jersey in the early 1920’s and immediately loved it, obtaining work in a laundry, where she sorted clothes.

“If it got you off the farm, you would have loved it too,” she said with a chuckle.

A longtime member of Randall Chapel Unified Freewill Baptist Church, Fuller is the “mother” of the church, a distinction given to the oldest member. She served on the usher board for many years, sang in the choir and also worked in the nurse’s ministry. Her cakes and sweet potato pies were highly sought after, but she quickly notes she has given up baking.

“I might fall in the stove,” she laughs.