Woman loving life at 106

Bernice Precia Fleshman Rushbrooke is an attractive woman with white hair and dark eyes. Standing to greet a visitor, she moves forward with ease. Her voice is soft, her words clear.
Her 106th birthday is Saturday.
 "She is amazing," said grandson Terry Looney. He's used to the surprise when he mentions in conversation that his grandmother lives with his parents. It usually takes a few seconds to register.
"Your grandmother- How old is she-" comes the response, for Looney is the father of grown children.
They think she's sitting in a wheelchair under blankets, he said.
That's not this grandmother.
"Mother's always kept up," said her daughter, Peggy Looney of Forest, with whom Bernice now lives. "If she could see today, she'd be on the computer."
Bernice put it this way: "I just love living - always have."
Born in 1902 in West Virginia, she began life in an era before commercial radio, TV, world wars, or interstate highways.
"We had outdoor games - we'd play ball - and a tree down below us had a swing on it," she said. "We had what we called the old pine tree, and we'd take our dolls and things over there and play."
She was the fifth child, born after Cecil, French, Glada and Paul. Her younger siblings were Clara, Howard, Eunice and Ethilene.
Growing up on a farm meant chores, "not really responsibilities," she said. "We all helped. We washed dishes and we carried water from the spring. We had to feed the chickens and the pigs."
Her father died, the older boys already had gone, and there was nothing to keep them in Lindside, W.Va. So her mother and the rest of the family moved to Roanoke, about 90 miles away.
"We came to Roanoke in 1925," she said. "We all got jobs and got along fine. Eunice and Ethilene were both school age."
Bernice - always slender at about 125-130 pounds and 5 feet 7 inches - had dark brown hair to go with those dark eyes and a beautiful complexion. Like her own mother and sisters, she was meticulous in her appearance, then as now.
In 1927 she married Joseph E. Rushbrooke, the owner of a lumberyard. Within a few years, she became a mother - first to daughter Peggy, and later a son, Joe.
Asked about her happiest years in her century-plus of achievements, she thought a moment, and said the time when she was raising her children.
Her daughter said, "It was a big house and there was always somebody in the family living with us.
"Mother fixed three big meals a day, every day, and would do my daddy's bookwork at night."
"Well, sometimes during the day," Bernice replied softly.
Her hands, still flexible after more than 100 years, were gifted in sewing, crochet, embroidery and quilting. She even made hats.
"She made all my clothes," said Looney. "I don't remember anything bought, until I was married."
"When I was in college, I told mother, 'I need a new dress.' She stayed up after midnight making me a dress." And with it came a pocketbook to match.
The family had a piano, which Bernice could play. Peggy took lessons from 5 years old to high school graduation - sometimes begrudgingly. "I fussed and screamed," she said, but lessons had to be done.
"It paid off, didn't it-" asked her mother.
It did, said her daughter.
After Peggy got married, her husband, Jun Looney, wanted her home with the children, so Peggy became a piano teacher and was always there when sons Terry and Rick came in from school.
Bernice's Roanoke house was a hub, even after her husband died in the late 1970s and she moved to a smaller home.
"Mother always was the one to come to if they had problems," said her son, Joe Rushbrooke of Roanoke, a retired administrative law judge.
On Sundays in later years, there was a bountiful gathering of young cousins, too.
"She'd prepare the meal, and the other sisters would help," Joe Rushbrooke said.
Terry Looney recalls those visits to his grandmother's house with great aunts and great uncles, cousins and family all together. "There was a huge family at that time," he said.
Bernice was a fairly strict disciplinarian, said Joe Rushbrooke, father of grandsons Gary and Chris.
"I was afraid to do anything wrong - not fearful of physical punishment - I guess I didn't want to disappoint her."
She is a good person, her son said, "always thinking of others before herself. And not just thinking of others, but doing things for others, without complaint."
"She's a great lady and we love her very much."
Bernice lived in her own home in Roanoke until she was 99.
"She did her own yard and everything," said Peggy.
Her eyesight was fading, and her hearing, as well.
"We knew she shouldn't be driving," said Peggy. "She went every week to get her hair fixed, but it didn't make any difference, it was all right turns. She knew how to get home."
"We went over there one day, and she was up in a tree cutting down a limb with a butcher knife," said Peggy. "I said, 'Mother, I think it's time. If we can find a bigger house, will you move with us-' She said yes, which surprised me. Her house sold immediately - it was adorable."
Her house held a collection of toys and dolls, some of which she has in her spacious apartment downstairs in her daughter's home. Most she gave away to family and to her church.
She takes care of her own apartment, which is beautifully furnished with her own things, including a vivid cathedral quilt wall hanging created by her skilled hands. Now, with limited vision, she keeps them busy as the official clean-laundry folder for the household.
And she rides her exercise bike.
"I don't ride it as much as I should, but I ride it," said Bernice, voicing the universal plight of home exercisers. She continues her tradition of good health - she was hospitalized in her youth with typhoid, and more recently, for cataract surgery - and that's it.
Her lifelong diet has been mostly vegetarian, although she never stinted on meat menus for her family or guests.
"I haven't got anything against meat," she said. "Some people have to have meat for breakfast and dinner. I'm not like that."
She does have several small meals and one Ensure in a day, and when she awakes in the middle of the night, she eats a banana.
"She gets up every morning and has one cup of coffee and a Krispy Kreme doughnut," said her daughter. "Other than that, that's about her only vice."
Bernice has no answers about how she's reached 106.
"I just lived a normal life - a normal country life," she said. "I don't remember thinking much about living or dying. I don't think I ever gave things like that much thought.
"I guess I thought I'd just live on."