At 100, She’s a Great Grand Marshal

When Manual Arts High School’s homecoming parade snaked onto the sunny athletic field last Friday, a bit of history rode in the first car.

In front of the cheerleaders, the girls’ volleyball team, the Auto Shop Club in a decorated car and the homecoming court in two limousines, was a tiny woman, barely able to peek over the car door.

When the parade approached the home stands, the thumping rap music was turned down long enough for the master of ceremonies to declare excitedly: “Let’s welcome our grand marshal, everyone. She’s Juliet Elizabeth Griswold and she graduated from Manual Arts in 1913.

“And she’s 100 years old!”

At that, a roar of approval broke out among students, released early from class. Sitting in the fenced-in bleachers, clinging to the metal gates of the field, they turned to each other and repeated, “100 years old!” as Juliet Griswold Wilson passed by, waving a stiff, purple school pennant and smiling.

“It’s great,” said cheerleading captain Kisha Watts, 17. “It’s great that she’s here and came out to support us.”

That Wilson was there at all last Friday, leading the parade from the passenger seat of a borrowed BMW convertible, was nothing short of a small miracle as far as Principal Robert R. Barner was concerned.

About two months ago, the school received a letter from Wilson’s daughter-in-law, saying that Wilson was about to turn 100. Would her alma mater send a birthday greeting? she asked.

Manual Arts sent back a huge card, made by an art class, and with it, an invitation. The school was celebrating its 90th homecoming, Barner wrote back, and since Wilson graduated 80 years ago, would she be the grand marshal?

*

In a small, pre-parade gathering in Barner’s office, student reporter Mabel Mendez scooted up close to Wilson, taking notes for a newspaper story and occasionally looking over the elderly woman’s shoulder as Wilson looked through a 1913 yearbook and reminisced.

“There were only two buildings back then,” Wilson told the group.

“And there was an enormous field of violets over there, owned by a Japanese couple,” she said, gesturing toward the corner of Vermont Avenue and 40th Place, where discount stores crowd the landscape. “And when they were in bloom, you could smell them forever.”

Wilson’s sight is failing, but Barner, particularly, held on to her every word as she saw for him what his school once was.

“There were no sidewalks, of course. When it rained, everything turned to mud, so they put planks down so we could walk to school,” she said.

“But there were trolley cars, I’ll bet,” Barner, 45, replied, encouraging her.

“Oh, yes. Trolley cars right in front, and violets,” Wilson said.

Skimming through the brittle pages of the 1913 yearbook, Barner found the sepia-toned photograph of Juliet Elizabeth Griswold in profile. He read aloud the inscription under her name: “She is as sunny as her locks.”

Barner said she hadn’t changed.

“Well, my hair used to be very red,” she said of her now snowy curls.

Flipping to another page, Barner found a shot of the Glee Club and asked which was Wilson. Mendez leaned forward as Wilson pointed with a firm hand to a girl in the lower left corner.

Anybody could see, looking at the yearbook, how much Manual Arts had changed.

There were 102 graduates in Wilson’s class, all white. Manual Arts now has about 2,300 students, mostly black and Latino.

Mendez, 17, saw other changes. There no longer is a Glee Club, no marching band, no chorus.

“There’s nothing like that because there’s no money for materials,” Mendez said, outside Wilson’s hearing. “Almost all of those kind of programs have been cut.”

Mendez, a few other students and Barner encouraged more memories from Wilson, who shared some things about her life: a first husband who died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. And yes, she said, it was hard being a single mother in the 1920s.

But there was one other question.

Since Wilson turned 100 on Nov. 7, she has been repeatedly asked the obvious: To what does she attribute this long life? A good sport, she answered again: “I just love people.”

“That and a glass of Port wine, every night before dinner,” said her son, John Silva, 77, from across the room.

The students giggled.

Before escorting Wilson to the parade, Barner reflected on the opportunity to talk with her about Manual Arts in the beginning: “It’s like going back to the Garden of Eden, to the beginning of time.”