CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- With family by her side, Hester Ford quietly celebrated her 112th birthday at her home just north of uptown. The big celebration happens this weekend.
“Oh we’re having a big cookout for friends and family,” her daughter Hattie Thomas said.
Ford is the oldest living person in the Carolinas and the ninth oldest in the United States.
Walking into her Charlotte home it’s clear to see Ford is loved. Happy birthday balloons, cards and banners hang from every wall in the home.
“Her health is pretty good,” her daughter said. “She’s still up and walking around with her walker.”
Ford is a devout Christian and spent many years volunteering at her local church.
She can recite many Bible verses, but her favorite is Psalm 23. At 112, she recited it without skipping a beat.
But if you ask her how she’s feeling, she’ll tell you she’s ready.
“I’m ready to go home,” Ford told us.
“She wants to go home to be with Jesus,” Thomas said of her mother. “But we told her he’s not ready because he has something else for her to do here.”
Ford was born in August 15, 1905 in Lancaster, South Carolina when Theodore Roosevelt was elected to his second term as President of the United States. She worked on a farm where she not only planted and picked cotton, but plowed the field and cut wood.
“She’s a hard working woman,” Thomas said.
Ford was married and the couple had 12 children; eight girls and four boys.
Ford moved to Charlotte in 1953 where she worked for more than 20 years as a nanny for two families in Myers Park.
She has 12 children, 48 grandchildren, 108 great-grandchildren and approximately 120 great-great-grandchildren.