Heritage House activities director Andrea Alexander, left, assists Mamie Rogers with cutting the cake celebrating her 106th birthday.(C. Todd Sherman The Vicksburg Post)

[8/18/03]Friends of Mamie Rogers at her 106th birthday party said she’s made them feel like part of her extended family since she moved to Vicksburg.

About 60 people gathered at Heritage House’s nursing home Saturday evening to honor Rogers, a 23-year resident of Vicksburg who was also featured in The Vicksburg Post on her birthday last year.

“It was wonderful,” Rogers said following her party, which was complete with old-time music from the Dixie Hill Band in the nursing home dining room.

Rogers’ sister, “Baby Doll” Taylor, 90, was at her side at the party. The two had lived at Vicksburg’s Magnolia Manor for years before Rogers moved to Heritage House in January.

“As long as I’ve known them, they’ve been living next to each other,” said Steve Rowland, who has attended Bible Holiness Church with the sisters for 16 years. “They’re inseparable.”

Rogers was born in 1897, the oldest of 29 children from a Sunflower County plantation. She named Taylor “Baby Doll,” but Taylor later had her first name changed to Lener Mae.

Rogers moved away in 1946 and spent years in Chicago where she found work making clothes.

“She used to be a serious seamstress,” Taylor’s granddaughter Rochella McDaniel said.

“She would make suits of clothes just like they came out of a store,” Taylor added.

Rogers settled here in 1980.

“My wife and I just started taking them to church,” Rowland said, adding that the sisters have spent much time since then with his four children.

“The two oldest, they raised them,” he said. “(Rogers) has made clothes for the kids. When my wife’s been in the hospital or sick, she would always cook dinner for us. We always try to do something for them, too. It’s just like family.”

Brenda Hynum, now Rogers’ legal caretaker, met the two on a downtown sidewalk about 18 years ago. The sisters would walk from their homes, which were next to each other off Fort Hill Drive, literally all over town to run their errands, Hynum said.

“The Lord brought us together,” Hynum said of their meeting one day outside a Clay Street pastry shop.

“Everywhere they go, they don’t do anything but spread love,” Hynum said of the sisters. “If you’ve been around the two of them, you’ve been blessed.”

Hynum said she sees the two nearly every day.

“They’re just part of our family,” she said.

Rogers’ first marriage ended in divorce, and she has been widowed by her second husband for as long as Rowland has known her, he said. Friends said she has a son, but he lives away and has been out of touch for years.

They also have a brother who is in his 70s at Magnolia Manor, and a sister in Illinois who is 100.

“Longevity kind of runs in the family,” McDaniel’s husband, Lealon Garrison, said.

Members of the Dixie Hill Band said Rogers had complimented them on an earlier performance of theirs at Heritage House, and they returned Saturday as a birthday present for her.

“She does good,” nursing home activity director Andrea Alexander said of Rogers, adding that Rogers still walks around the nursing home often.

“She loves to sit outside,” Alexander said. “She sits outside every day when it’s not raining. She has a sewing kit and she sews every day.”

Rogers’ secret for living so long was divulged not long after she first met staff members at Heritage House, Alexander said.

“She told us when she first came her secret was that she drank a Dr Pepper a day,” she said.