She was in a wheelchair, and she wasn’t wearing shoes — but she was dressed to the nines in a pink blouse, white slacks, pretty jewelry and her white hair beautifully coifed.

Evelyn White’s friends wouldn’t expect to see her any other way. They say she’s a fashion plate, always has been.

A few injuries haven’t changed her. She broke her hip two years ago when she fell getting out of the shower, pushed her lifeline button “and the ambulance was here before you could say scat.” Later, she had to have foot surgery, so she can’t wear shoes.

“But I suffer no pain, and I’m not dizzy,” she said. “I don’t know how many different questions they (nurses and doctors) ask me, and I say ‘no’ to all of them.”

Evelyn was born on Great Street in Vicksburg 96 years ago, on April 14, 1914, but her twin sister, Helen, had made her entry the day before.

“Dr. Bonelli delivered her and then forgot about me, and when he came back after midnight, I was there,” she said. “I was blue, and he had to blow breath into me — and I’m still here.”

Evelyn’s twin sister died when they were 4. She remembers them playing together, and said though their names didn’t rhyme, “both had l’s and n’s.”

When she was 5, her sister Vivian was born, then after another five years, a baby brother joined the family.

At age 8, she had an abscessed tooth, and Dr. Tilghman went to their home to pull it — and cracked her jawbone. Her father refused to allow surgery because it would leave a scar, but later a New Orleans surgeon operated from the inside “and for two years, it looked like this,” Evelyn said, puffing out her right cheek. “They called me candy ball.”

It was probably during some of her childhood illnesses that she learned to love to read, for while suffering from malaria, which she had several times and was often out of school, she almost wore out the family’s set of “The Book of Knowledge,” reading everything in them, “but I didn’t retain it all.”

She grew up in an Italian family. Her maiden name was Conti, and her mother was a Palmer from Bolton, “though her real name was Palmeri, but they didn’t understand Italian over there.” The Contis were from Naples, the Palmeris from Sicily.

“Uncle Nick had a tailoring company here, and my father was in the cleaning business, so I changed clothes four times a day. I’d do it now, but it’s a little harder since I broke my hip.”

She always had a passion for pretty clothes, and among her possessions is a handsome slip sewn by her mother, bordered with detailed embroidery, which she made when she was 17, before she got married. It’s still in pristine condition.

“I wore it once as a wedding dress,” when she was in her teens in a competition at a skating rink, her date posing as the groom “and we won the prize. No one knew where I got that wedding dress.”

Sewing wasn’t a talent Evelyn enjoyed, for she made her own outfits “only once or twice and wore them only once.” One ensemble was pink gingham with matching gloves and high heels. She wore it to the Hotel Vicksburg to listen to the orchestra.

When she was a girl, the family moved a few blocks to South Street, which was basically a Jewish neighborhood with the Presbyterian Church in the middle. One neighbor, Mrs. Hughes Mendel, made quite an impression, for she was always elegant in either pink or white and had beautiful blonde curls that Evelyn said “she washed in champagne. She had a carriage and a footman.”

Evelyn is virtually a living city directory from bygone years, and she said, “If you had time, I could tell you about every store on Washington Street and everybody who owned them.”

She laughs about the time when she was 17 and appeared on stage at the old Walnut Street Theatre, later renamed the Saenger, when she danced to “Dancing the Devil Away” in a production arranged by instructor Glen Chandler Jones. Just before the curtain went up, Mrs. Jones was dipping a comb into a glass of water, then combing Evelyn’s hair to make it stay in place, “and the water ran all down the back of my red satin pants — so I couldn’t turn around on stage.” It was an entrance actress Loretta Young later claimed as her trademark on TV — but Evelyn did it first.

Evelyn’s father died when she was only 40, five years after they had moved to Main Street. Evelyn went to St. Francis all of her school years, learning the skills needed for secretarial work. Her first job was for nine doctors at the Sanitarium.

“I loved it,” she said. “I’d still be there if they had paid me anything, but they didn’t need me that much.” She later worked for the Mississippi River Commission, where she retired in 1975.

But she wasn’t through working. She had two golden retrievers she walked in the park every day, “had been doing it for seven years, and one day Tony Franco saw me and said, ‘Evelyn, Father Egan needs a secretary.’ It was Christmas week. I said, ‘Well, I’m retired. I walk my dogs every day and go to the beauty shop. I don’t have time.’”

Franco urged her to go and talk to Egan, “which was in 1982, and I was there until two years ago, when I broke my hip.” She worked for a battery of priests.

Evelyn was 32 when she married Jasper “Jack” White. They met right after World War II, when she and friends went to Tuminello’s Restaurant to celebrate someone’s birthday.

“When I got out of the car, I saw through the window four men sitting at a table, and I commented that I liked the looks of the back of one man’s head — and I married him.”

They began dating when he asked her to go to the Rainbow Club with him, a place they often frequented, “and I married him because I got tired of staying out all night.”

The wedding was in Jackson, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Scott Fowler, on the Road of Remembrance. To Jack and Evelyn were born two children, Martin and Evelyn. Jack, who had heart and kidney problems, died in 1970.

Evelyn has always enjoyed writing poetry, penning lines “about just about everybody I know” just for fun, something she began when she was young. She wrote the following about one of her golden retrievers:

“His name is

Leroy Lijah Brown,

The prettiest dog

in my hometown.

Eight years old,

and good as gold.

Likes to hunt,

likes to swim,

I cater to his every whim.

You know why

Leroy dotes on me?

’Cause he thinks I’m family.”

She entered the bit of doggerel in a dog food contest and said, “I thought I was going to win $25,000 and get to ride in the Macy’s parade,” and she did make it to the semi-finals. She saw the parade two years ago — but she wasn’t riding in it.

She loves to travel — has seen much of Europe and this country — but the trip to Knoxville two years ago was not exactly a vacation. She had just broken her hip, and her son, Martin, came to get her and take her home with him to Knoxville. A broken hip didn’t slow her much, and she told Martin, “ I’ve never been to Boston,” so with family and friends they went to snowy New York where they stayed a week, seeing the sights, but never making it to Boston. Evelyn remained in Knoxville for two years, then came home to Vicksburg. Evelyn has an apartment at Belmont Gardens, and her granddaughter takes her where she needs to go, including Mass each week at St. Paul, where she was christened 96 years ago.

She recently asked her granddaughter if she knew any women over 90 who still wore eye shadow. She said she didn’t.

“Well, I’m not going without it, and I’m not going without my earrings,” Evelyn told her. “Absolutely not.”

Of course not — no one would recognize her if she weren’t dressed to the nines!

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Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.