Age is not just a number for Edna Lawler.
At 112, Lawler’s age makes her the oldest living person in Illinois. And she will be celebrating that milestone Wednesday at Waterford Estates Retirement Community in Hazel Crest, where her family will gather for her birthday.
“We won’t be having a big party,” said her daughter, Irma Pestlin, of Tinley Park. “She is past parties. We have had about 12 really big ones. This birthday will be a quiet one.”
Lawler is considered a supercentenarian, or a person who lives past the age of 110. According to the Gerontology Research Group, which regularly updates its World Supercentenarian Rankings List, Lawler is not only the oldest individual in Illinois, but she also ranks as the 11th-oldest in the United States and the 43rd-oldest person in the world.
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To place her mother on the official supercentenarian list, Pestlin had to provide two forms of identification. But when a person is born in 1904 in the family home in a small Indiana farm town, finding a birth certificate can prove to be difficult, if not impossible.
“Indiana didn’t require birth certificates until years later, so I tracked down her certificate of baptism. She was baptized when she was 4 days old, so they accepted that,” Pestlin said.
That certificate, along with her marriage certificate, were enough to place her on the GRG list and officially on Table E, which is the go-to record for the listings of supercentenarians.
Throughout her long life, Lawler has always expressed a fascination with the advances in transportation and computers fascinate her, her daughter said.
“She was born a month before the Wright brothers flew their plane at Kitty Hawk. Everywhere she went when she was young was on a horse, or horse and wagon. Then zoom to 1969 and we are on the moon. That was thrilling to her,” her daughter said.
Her family said she has no secret to living a long life other than doing things in moderation and working hard.
“She did everything in moderation. She ate everything she wanted, but in moderation. She walked a lot and she had faith in God which, I think, played a big part in her life. She turned a lot of her worries over to God.”
In June, Lawler suffered a stroke. She is hard of hearing, has vision loss and trouble speaking. But she continues to have a sweet disposition, according to her daughter, and her caregiver Betty Papelleras.
“She is very nice; (a) very wonderful woman,” said Papelleras, who has cared for Lawler for five years. “She never gets mad, and she never raises her voice. And she is so polite to everyone. And, she has good genes.”
Born in Goodland, Ind., Lawler was the oldest of six children. Her father was a farmer, and the family moved from one rented farm to another until he bought his own farm in Beaverville, Ill.
Lawler’s education started in a one-room schoolhouse and stopped after the first year of high school so she could help out on the family farm.
One day when Lawler was a teenager, she picked up the family phone and heard some big news shouted through the receiver.
“I recall her saying when World War I ended she heard it on the party line, and she ran out to the farm to tell her parents,” said Norm Pestlin, her son-in-law. “She was 14 at time, and she witnessed the end of World War I. That is incredible.”
Lawler left the family farm to work as a domestic in Kankakee until she met, through mutual friends, her husband, John, who lived in Harvey. The couple had a long-distance romance, her family said.
When she was 30, she married and set up her own house in Harvey, raised four daughters. She was active in Ascension Catholic Church in Harvey, where she remains a member. She moved to Waterford 12 years ago.
She has outlived all her brothers and sisters, as well as one daughter. Today, Lawler has 13 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren.
“She was a good mother and dedicated to her family and her God, and that makes a pretty good person. We are proud of her because of that,” her daughter said.
Patricia Trebe is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.