Agnes Lewis Clark was an autumn baby, born in Radford in October a hundred years ago. Today, she’s among the fewer than 200 women in the City of Radford who were older than 85 in 2017, and one of the fewer than one percent of women in Virginia older than 85 according to UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
Closer to home, she’s the oldest woman at Mt. Olive United Methodist Church, and, at 100, she is celebrated as the Mother of the Church.
“Mothers of the church are usually the oldest people in the church,” James Webb, lay servant of the church, said. “They step in to share their knowledge especially to guide the young people.”
Clark was born in 1918. WW1 was still going on. Women couldn’t vote. Barely 50 years had passed since the nation’s Civil War and the struggle continued for African Americans like her in the American South.
Talking to her daughters about their mother’s life, they describe a woman who has been mother and guide throughout a long and hard, but happy life built around work, community, family and church.
She was born into a big family, but her mother and father died when she was just eight. Her big brother and sister raised her.
While Clark doesn’t talk much about being a girl, daughter Constance Sherman, who’s in her 70s, said, Sherman remembers Radford as a child.
“You know, she doesn’t talk much about being a little girl,” Sherman said. “A lot of people didn’t. It wasn’t especially easy. So much mistrust during that time. I know she never talked about things to us.
“We were always told to sit in the back of the bus when we went to Radford. That was my experience. We never went ‘til we got older.
“We used to get together to go on picnics to different parks around Floyd and Carter’s Wayside. All the families together from the neighborhood would gather at the church to do things for the youngsters. Bible study. That was where our fun was.”
Sherman remembers their Radford neighborhood, farms in town and her mother.
“Yes, they lived in town. They always lived in Radford, and people kept hogs. And goats, I remember,” she said recalling making pets of the pigs and then being upset when it was time to kill them.
“We lived in town, and I remember in the fall, the mothers getting together making apple butter and they’d kill a hog and get the meat, and I remember the chickens. We were close to her brother and he had pigs.”
“She talked about her friends and nieces and playing together. Mainly, they were a real family. One of her sisters raised her.” Her oldest daughter Brenda Cobbs, 28, said.
The daughters both remember their mother as working all the time.
“She used to do day work and work in people’s houses and then worked at Radford College in housekeeping and worked there ‘til she retired. She worked all the time,” Cobb said.
At 100, she’s still happy her daughters said.
“She’s got a good sense of humor. She can say the funniest things. People talk to her and she makes ‘em laugh,” Sherman said. “She loves Wheel of Fortune and loved working crossword puzzles until poor eye sight interfered.
“She didn’t have an easy life and work back then you just had to get what you could get. That’s what black women did back in those days. The best job she got was when she went to Radford [College]. She raised all the kids by herself. Her sister had kids and all like sisters and brothers.”
Mother of her church and mother of many, Agnes Lewis Clark has a remarkable family: eight children.
Some have stayed in Radford, others have moved away, Cobb wrote in an email: 27 grandchildren, 53 great-grandchildren and 33 great-great grandchildren.
Asked about what her mother’s secret to a long life might be, she didn’t pause.
“We have a big, happy family. She was just a happy, hard-working person. She worked. Came home took care of the kids. She’s still happy,” she said.
