A resilient woman, a remarkable life: Waterbury loses Florilla Ames at age 110

Oct. 29, 2021  |  By Megan Schneider | Community News Service

Florilla Ames recalls stories of her younger days with visitors a day before her 110th birthday. Photo by Gordon Miller.

Waterbury Center resident Florilla Ames, believed to be the oldest person in Vermont, passed away on Friday, October 22, at age 110. 

Her loved ones will remember her for her quick wit, her good heart, and the many stories she would tell. Ames’ life was full of teaching, dancing, community and friends all while having lived through two pandemics and a disastrous flood. 

As she celebrated some of her recent birthdays, Ames' notoriety as a supercentenarian grew. At age 102, she granted an interview to videographer James Valastro where she talked about her parents’ love for dancing that they passed on to her. In 2017, WCAX Channel 3’s Joe Carroll profiled her for a “Super Seniors” segment on the occasion of her 106th. 

In May 2020, she spoke to a Seven Days reporter to compare the 1918 influenza pandemic to COVID-19. Photographer Gordon Miller and freelance writer Cheryl Casey (whose volunteer roles include president of the Waterbury Historical Society) visited with Ames in March as she turned 110. 

Ames never tired of telling stories from her long and full life and sharing lessons she learned along the way. Waterbury journalist David Goodman enjoyed such a visit with Ames and her husband Darrel for a 2007 interview for the Waterbury Record. 

March 2021: Signs of the times old and new. Photos of Florilla and her husband Darryl Ames alongside facemasks. Photo by Gordon Miller.

Two of her closest friends in Waterbury, Sandy and Al Lewis, took some time this week to talk about Florilla Ames and how they will remember her. 

“Her quick quips would almost catch us off guard. She could be very strict about some things, but she had a funny bone, that was for sure, and just a big heart” said Sandy Lewis.

For the past four or five years, Mrs. Lewis would get Ames’ groceries, stamps, and anything else she needed. Dropping off these items gave her a chance to sit and chat with Ames and hear her many stories. “She would give you little bits and pieces, little bullets, of what life was like for the past hundred years,” Lewis said. 

As a former engineer, Al Lewis would help around the house with any maintenance tasks Ames needed assistance with. “Everything that her housekeeper did and any friends that came to visit, certainly us, had the objective to have her wishes honored in that she’d be able to live at home as long as she could,” he said.

Live at home she did for many years in her childhood home. A nativeVermonter, Ames was born March 17, 1911 in Montpelier and grew up on Barnes Hill in Waterbury. In 1918, she and the rest of her family were sick with the flu but lived through that pandemic. In 2020 she became one of the oldest people to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the current pandemic.

In interviews where she spoke of her childhood, she told of spending time outdoors, get-togethers in her house where there was music and dancing, her father calling square dances. “What’s more fun than dancing?” she mused to Valastro in his recording.

Florilla Ames' high school graduation portrait, 1928. Photo by Gordon Miller.

She was a teacher for many years after attending Waterbury High School, studying at Montpelier Seminary and then obtaining her teaching credentials from Lyndon State. After meeting her husband Darrel Ames of 70 years – when she was a teacher and he a student – they moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, for 40 years. When Ames’ mother grew sick in the late 1970s, Ames returned to her home in Waterbury to care for her mother until she passed.

Darrel eventually followed her to Vermont. He died in 2008 and Florilla has spent nearly all of the years since in her childhood home. It wasn’t until just a couple of months ago that she left her home and went to Woodridge Rehabilitation and Nursing in Berlin. Sandy said she could tell that Ames missed her home, but she accepted Woodridge was her new and final home. 

In their years together, something that Darrel and Florilla Ames loved to do was snowmobiling. They did this well into their 90s. “They were both physically active and they knew how to get by in Vermont,” the Lewises recalled.

Along with snowmobiling, Florilla did reverse painting on her mirrors around the house, sewing, and knitting. Al said when they would sit and have conversations, Ames would be knitting, maybe even undoing her work when she missed a stitch to be as precise as possible. 

The Lewises knew Ames both with her husband and later on independently. “She allowed her husband, Darrel, to carry on the conversations, but whenever she would inject in the conversations it was very intelligent, it was spot on, and usually very much to the point,” Al said. 

They recounted how Ames’ independence blossomed later in her life after Darrel’s death. Al said she knew who to call if her house needed repairs and had full command of what she was doing.

She was very independent well into her old age. “Up until six months ago she was signing her own checks to pay bills, doing her own taxes and basically dictating what she wanted and how she wanted it done,” Al said. 

Along with her independence, Ames was a strong woman who knew her importance. “She was a very savvy person for her age and for growing up in a time when women weren’t given much consideration. I think she never bought into that bologna,” Sandy said. 

Up until the COVID-19 pandemic began, Ames welcomed visitors into her home from all over Waterbury on her birthday which fell on St. Patrick’s Day. “They like to come and see somebody that’s so old,” Ames said with a smile in her interview with WCAX. 

Florilla enjoyed sharing stories with visitors. Photo by Gordon Miller

She loved having visitors every year along with a cake made by one of her closest friends that she would share with the visitors. “It meant a lot to her that a friend would go to the effort of making this special cake for her,” Sandy recalled.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, it made it hard for Ames not to have visitors. The Lewises said they didn’t go in the house for quite a while, but Ames did have her housekeeper, Jane, who had become her caretaker for the past three years and who they described as Ames’ constant companion.

Visits resumed once Ames and her friends were vaccinated last year, they said. 

One question many might have had for Ames is what her secret was to living to such an age. Sandy said her basic concept was to keep active. However, how she got through the grief of losing some of her best friends and family over the years was to just keep moving on. “You just keep putting one foot in front of the other,” Sandy recalled Ames saying. “She had a resilience that is hard to find.”  

Al and Sandy got to see Ames two days before she died. They talked about how special that was and even though Ames’ memory was going, Sandy said she believes Ames knew who was visiting when she said to them, “thank you for everything.” 

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A celebration of Florilla Ames’ life is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 3, at the Waterbury Center Community Church, 3600 Waterbury-Stowe Road. Interment will take place in the family plot at the Maple Street Cemetery in Waterbury Center.  

An obituary for Florilla Ames is posted on Waterbury Roundabout and on the Perkins-Parker Funeral Home website where people may leave online condolences for her family members. Another noteworthy event this past week was the death of William “Bill” James of Bristol, Vermont, also at age 110, on Sunday, Oct. 24. James was born in Lincoln, in July 1911, three and a half months after Florilla Ames. Together they were considered Vermont’s two oldest residents.  

Megan Schneider is a St. Michael’s College senior working with the University of Vermont’s Community News Service.