October 20, 2010

Catholic faith has sustained 110-year-old through life’s challenges

By Mary Ann Wyand

MILAN, Ind. (CNS)—Emelie Weil, a 110-year-old parishioner at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Milan, has lived in three centuries, during 10 papacies and 20 U.S. presidencies.

Throughout 11 decades, Weil said, her Catholic faith has sustained her.

Considered a supercentenarian, she even survived a broken neck from a fall down a stairway 12 years ago. Now she uses a wheelchair and has a hard time hearing, but is still astute.

One Internet source notes that worldwide there are as many as 300 people age 110 and older out of 6.7 billion people, but the Gerontology Research Group in Los Angeles maintains an international list of only 75 such supercentenarians.

For the past 10 years, Weil has lived with Bob and Marilyn Weil, her son and daughter-in-law, on their cattle farm near Milan, the home of the 1954 state high school basketball champions made famous by the movie “Hoosiers.”

“I have a wonderful family,” she told The Criterion, newspaper of the Indianapolis Archdiocese.

Weil still prays from her well-worn prayer book each day and says the rosary.

Born Emelie Seissiger on Nov. 20, 1899, in northern Kentucky, she was 21 and an accomplished pianist when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920, giving women the right to vote. She met her future husband, Stephen Weil, a year later.

After completing nursing school, Weil worked as a registered nurse in Chicago, New York and Cincinnati.

In 1932, she and Stephen were married. Her husband died 11 years later of pneumonia, leaving her at age 43 with seven children to raise by herself on a 15-acre farm near Cincinnati. The oldest child, Mary, was 10 years old at the time and the youngest, Rita, was only 2 months old.

Weil returned to nursing when Rita was in high school, and she encouraged all of her children to go to college.
Although it’s been 67 years since her husband’s death, Weil said she misses him more than ever and is looking forward to seeing him again in heaven.

Looking back at her long and healthy life, Weil said she loved raising her children. Now she enjoys spending time with her 25 grandchildren and 39 great-grandchildren.

During her lengthy retirement, Weil has kept busy painting colorful pictures of flowers, birds and other nature scenes, which her family members have preserved in a self-published book.

She said her favorite pope of the 10 during her lifetime is Pope Pius XII. Her favorite president from her 110 years is Ronald Reagan.

Historical conflicts during her lifetime include two Russian revolutions, two Balkan wars, two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

Weil said she was happy to see the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which led to the reunification of Germany.

She prefers to talk about God, her loved ones and family history.

During her Kentucky childhood, young Emelie’s father owned a grocery store next to the family’s home. She and her seven siblings helped with chores, including making German-style sauerkraut in 50-gallon barrels.

Weil is proud that her father donated money to the Catholic Church to buy land for a new parish in the Diocese of Covington, Ky. Decades later, she donated land to the Cincinnati Archdiocese.

“Emelie always wonders why the Lord lets her stay here,” said Father Francis Eckstein, a retired archdiocesan priest who lives in Milan and brings Weil Communion on first Fridays.

“I tell her it’s because she says a lot of prayers, and she’s praying to keep the rest of us in line. For 110 years, she has kept the faith. That’s pretty fantastic,” he said.

Weil’s advice for finding happiness in life is to be faithful to God.

“I haven’t done anything that anybody else couldn’t do,” she said. “Just say your prayers, and do the best you can.”