Farewell to Virginia Campbell, 101 years young

When I met Virginia Campbell, she had just turned 100 years old.

In fact, that was the reason I wanted to talk with her. We'd started up a regular feature called 10 Questions, for which we asked interesting people -- you guessed it -- 10 questions. I was scheduled to meet Campbell at her 100th birthday party, at the Little White School in Oswego, where she taught for years.

It didn't take long to figure out that the interview just wasn't going to happen that day.

You have never seen a birthday party like this one. Campbell was seated under a canopy on the school lawn, and she was surrounded -- literally, surrounded -- by family and friends. They'd traveled from near and far to help her celebrate, and as she sat there, they approached her one by one, talking and hugging.

It went on like this for hours. I sat next to her with my trusty audio recorder, but try as she might, Campbell couldn't tear herself away from her party long enough to answer my silly questions. But she never made me feel like a nuisance, or like an outsider. Later, she actually got the chance to play an old steam calliope, which her family had brought in to surprise her, and that, like the whole day, was something special.

I finally did get to interview her, the next day at her Oswego home -- the same one she'd lived in for decades, on Maple Street. We sat outside together on her porch, while other family members came and went, and we talked for well over an hour.

Yes, she answered my questions, but they were intended to be lighthearted little things -- "What are some of your earliest childhood memories," for example, or "Do you ever use the Internet?" In between, though, we talked about her life.

We talked about her husband, Francis "Pete" Campbell, whom she married after moving to the Oswego area in 1930. He was a farmer, which suited her just fine, since she'd grown up on her family's own farm. But once the Campbell land was sold, Pete took a job as a utility worker, while Virginia continued her teaching career.

Pete died in 1997, at the age of 88. And while she never outright said so, Virginia clearly missed him.

We talked about her earliest memories, including Woodrow Wilson's election in 1912, an event that shocked her staunchly Republican parents. She also told me what it was like when women got the right to vote in 1922 -- her mom, she said, was "tickled. You would have thought she'd been given a very expensive gift."

And we talked about her regular birthday request -- she asked friends and family to forego giving her gifts but rather donate to the Kendall County Food Pantry. Which they did, in the thousands. That's just the kind of person Virginia Campbell was.

We talked for a long time, and she made me feel like a guest, like a new friend, rather than just someone there to interview her for having lived an entire century. I came away feeling like she'd let me in to her extraordinary life.

Virginia Campbell had just turned 100 when I met her. She made it to 101, before dying peacefully on Sunday. I only met her once, but I took so much away from that one conversation. I did, of course, ask her the secret to living 100 years, and here's what she said:

"I'm no authority. But I know one thing to be sure: Be happy. Don't be miserable and negative; be positive."

And she's right. It really is that simple. Rest in peace, Virginia.