Centegenarian has never been outside of Jefferson County

            By Tracy Duffy, THG Features

When Ruth Brown listens to the radio and hears about American troops heading off to Iraq, it brings back vivid memories.  To her, it doesn’t seem all that long ago when she had to fight back tears when her older brother Lawrence left to head overseas to fight another war.  The year was 1917 and Lawrence was on his way to Europe to fight the Germans in World War I.  Ruth was age 15 and had already quit school to work the family farm.

Things sure have changed over the years, but there has been one constant in Jefferson County since the Roosevelt (that’s Teddy Roosevelt) administration—Ruth Brown has seen the sun rise and set in her native Jefferson County for the last 102 years.

She never once has set foot outside the county, which is remarkable in this day and age when one can get in a plane and cross the country or be on another continent in a matter of hours.  She has never crossed into nearby Scott County or crossed the bridge in Madison to Trimble County, Kentucky.  Nor has she ever wanted to.

“I was always happy here and never saw a reason to go anywhere else.  People need to be satisfied with what they got,” says the raspy but spry centegenarian who years ago lost her sight but can still hear with the help of hearing aids.

Ruth spent much of her life in the rural areas around Kent, where her father John Evans purchased 18 acres after moving from North Carolina before she was born.  Shortly after turning 16, she married Thomas Brown, the son of a neighbor, and moved to his piece of land next door, where they continued to raise corn and other crops until Thomas died in 1980.  Ruth then sold the farm and moved in with her son George (now 80), who is now the only one of her four children still living and with who she resides today in a small house in Madison.

Today Ruth is confined to a wheelchair and spends most of her time listening to the radio.  Granddaughter Mary Newton checks in on her father and grandmother daily to make sure they are doing alright.

When visiting Ruth, I offered to drive her over to Kentucky to break her incredible streak but she refused.  “I have been here since Moby Dick was a minnow, why would I want to leave now?  I have always has everything I ever needed right here.  I never heard nothing good about Kentucky anyway.”

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