April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
CENTENARIAN-PLUS
107-year-old Catholic remembers dirt roads and 1928 wedding
107-year-old Catholic remembers dirt roads and 1928 wedding
That makes sense, considering Mrs. McClements has steadfastly kept doing so for 107 years.
Dorothy McClements, whose birthday is May 7, may just be the oldest Catholic in the Diocese of Albany. She still lives in the Stillwater home where she was born in 1909.
Mrs. McClements remembers a time before pavement. Her grandfather would plow the dirt streets of Stillwater with a log dragged behind his horses.
Her family's house was one of the first in the neighborhood to get a telephone: number 176J, as Mrs. McClements recalls. If the phone rang for someone else in the area, she would have to run to their house to deliver the message.
The 107-year-old remembers going to her grandmother's house to eat delicious meals, playing with paper dolls made out of old catalogs, and even some less-pleasant moments, like hiding under the bed when a pig was about to be slaughtered.
"I had a friend and she lived next door," Mrs. McClements told The Evangelist. The two girls would have "tea parties" with greenery they found in the woods: "We used to go out and pick weeds. We ate a lot of things that we shouldn't have ate," the centenarian confessed.
Mrs. McClements was raised by a friend of the family she calls "Nana," who was like a grandmother to her: "She was a special person in my life."
As a young girl, Mrs. McClements would go over to the Ballston Stillwater Knitting Mill, a nearby sock factory, to sell fudge and cottage cheese that Nana made to the workers.
"You learn a lot when you go around selling things," she remarked, recounting an incident when a woman stuck her finger right into a jar of cottage cheese before paying for it.
Nana went on to care for Mrs. McClements' own children while she got a job at the knitting mill, too.
"I was a looper," the centenarian said, explaining: "There's a little seam in a sock. I sewed that up."
When she was 16, Mrs. McClements met her husband, Robert. "He was boarding with a lady in Schenectady," she said, and came to visit with a friend, setting up a double date with Mrs. McClements and one of her friends.
The other couple didn't hit it off -- "We looked out of the door and she said she was going home," Mrs. McClements remembered -- but Robert and Dorothy McClements were married in 1928. The new bride was just 18 years old.
They made no fuss about the wedding, she said. "We went to Schenectady and found a number of a place where they had a justice of the peace. He did it and that was that."
But, nearly 90 years later, she can still describe her dress: "It was very light green. Nana said, 'Get married in green and you'll be seen!' Nana never thought it was right."
Today, Mrs. McClements has eight children, 37 grandchildren, 80 great-grandchildren and 14 great-great-grandchildren. Seven of the McClements children still live in the area; nine members of the clan care for their matriarch in shifts.
There's also Peaches, her parrot, for company. He's the successor of another bird named Mickey; Mrs. McClements likes to sit in her armchair and watch Peaches' antics.
In fact, when the centenarian broke her leg a number of years ago, the surgeon wasn't sure he wanted to operate on such an elderly woman. Her daughters recalled that Mrs. McClements convinced the doctor to go ahead by telling him that she had to get home to feed the bird.
Mrs. McClements still likes to keep busy. "Every day, she says, 'What can I do?'" remarked her daughter, Joan Rhonda. Mrs. Rhonda lives nearby and comes over frequently to help her mother, as do her siblings.
Both Mrs. DiCerce and Mrs. Rhonda stress the importance placed on their Catholic faith when they were growing up. "You went to confession every single Saturday," said Mrs. DiCerce. The family walked a mile to attend Mass at what's now All Saints on the Hudson parish in Mechanicville/Stillwater, always dressed in their Sunday best. The McClements children were altar servers and choir members.
Although the matriarch hasn't been able to attend Mass for a number of years now, she still receives the Eucharist every Wednesday through home visits from a parish eucharistic minister.
Her family is planning a party to celebrate her remarkable birthday.
"It's nice to at least reach this age," said Mrs. McClements. "I feel good."[[In-content Ad]]
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