Simply Present with Robie Banks

Cathy leaned over and whispered to Ms. Banks, “Listen, we’re about to be tested to see if we’ve got that virus. No matter what happens, you just promise me that you’re going to fight this. Don’t give up. Promise me that. Many people are dying from this virus, and at your age, they say it’s hard to beat. But I need you to beat this. Promise me.”

Ms. Robie Banks whispered. “I promise.”

Cathy was not surprised when she and the older woman in her care both tested positive for COVID. “How ever many symptoms there are for this virus, we had them all,” she said. In addition to COVID, Ms. Banks was diagnosed with pneumonia and spent four days in the hospital. She was still in quarantine on her birthday, which was August 16, 2021. Her 105th birthday.

COVID was not Ms. Banks' first global pandemic. Born in 1916, Ms. Banks was two years old when the influenza pandemic (a.k.a. the Spanish flu) of 1918 hit. By April 1920, the virus had infected approximately a third of the world’s population. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website, mortality estimates ranged from “17 million to 100 million from an estimated 500 million infections globally.” During her early years, scarlet fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, polio, measles, and whooping cough were common causes of death among the young. Cemeteries reveal just how much loss was suffered for families in the not-so-distant past–a time before vaccines, penicillin, and other antibiotics were readily available.

Robie Banks was the first of twelve children born to Allean Mason. Because of her mother’s young age, she was raised by her grandparents, Charles and Polly Ann Hicks. Holding up a copy of an old photograph, Ms. Banks' caregiver, Cathy McClendon, asked, “Do you know who this is, Ms. Banks?”

She smiled, which was something she often did, and replied, “That’s my Papa.”

To learn more about her family, I went to thehickspreserve.org, a website maintained by Thomas Jones, a great-grandson of Ms. Banks' grandparents, and his wife, Laurell. Charles Hicks was born a slave in 1838 on a plantation in what would later become Johnson County. (Johnson County was formed from Washington, Laurens, and Emanuel counties in 1858.) At the time, his name was Charles Page, which was the surname of the

owner. According to the website, the slave owner was “a brutal man.” In 1860, Charles was sold to retired U.S. Army major James H. Hicks Sr., and changed his name to Charles Hicks. He served as a servant to his master’s son, Lt., James Hicks Jr., in the 14th Georgia Infantry Regiment of General Robert E. Lee’s army and accompanied him to infamous battles in places like Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. When Lt. Hicks, Jr., was wounded in action in 1864, both men returned to Georgia. After he recovered, Lt. Hicks returned to fight with his regiment in Virginia.

There are different accounts of the events that followed. One states that Charles left Georgia with the intent of rejoining Lt. Hicks in Virginia. Another says that he was attempting to escape. His obituary would actually assert, “[Hicks] was forced to join the Northern army and serve as a cook.” Whatever the circumstance, documents show that Charles enlisted in the Union Army on December 1, 1864, “on the bank of the Ogeechee River in Jefferson County,” and served with Sherman during the federal occupation of Savannah in the 110th U.S. Colored Volunteer Infantry. After his release from federal service in 1866, Charles returned to Johnson County.

In the 1890s, Charles Hicks moved to Lyons, Georgia, where he bought a farm in the 1890s. Ten years later, he married Polly Ann Banks. He was sixty-four years old at the time. According to an article that appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier on May 6, 1939, entitled, “He Served With Both Armies in the Civil War,” Charles Hicks, residing in Toombs County, who will soon celebrate his onehundredth birthday, has the unique distinction of being the only man ever to receive a pension for services in both the Confederate and Federal armies during the Civil War.”

Charles and his wife, Polly Ann, a much-loved midwife in Toombs County, had six children together. At the age of 94, they purchased about sixty or so acres of land on the outskirts of Lyons and designated a portion of the land “for the purpose of building a church, establishing a cemetery and providing classroom space for the very first school to educate colored children in the local Toombs county area” (website). (Note: The Jordan Stream Baptist Church served the community until its closure in 2018.)

Charles Hicks was an honorary member of the United Confederate Veterans and a veteran of the Union Army. In July of 1938, the 75th and final reunion of Civil War veterans from both the North and South was held in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Charles Hicks was there. He lived another three years and passed away only two months from turning 103. In 1998, when the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C., was unveiled, Charles Hicks’ daughter, Thomas’ grandmother Lillie B. Jones, was there to see her father’s name honored.

This was the historical backdrop in which Robie Banks was raised. Even though her grandfather, Charles Hicks, was already seventy-eight years old when she was born, he would live another twenty-five years. In fact, he was still farming at 100 years old.

Like most family histories, the events of Ms. Banks' early years are preserved only in the memories of those with whom she shared her life. From a manilla envelope full of documents, I found a copy of her marriage certificate to Elbert Banks on April 13, 1936, in White Plains, New York. She was nineteen at the time. “I always understood she went there looking for a better work opportunity with one of her sisters and a cousin,” said Thomas.

Another document from the envelope showed that on October 6, 1942, Elbert was drafted into the army to serve during WWII. A diploma revealed his completion of a “Radio Operators and Mechanics” course. With the rank of Staff Sergeant, he was honorably discharged at the end of his service in 1946. A certificate for Radio-Television Technician provided a clue as to what Elbert’s profession might have been after his military service. In 1996, Elbert died at the age of 82. That was twenty-five years ago.

At 105, Ms. Banks's favorite pastime is still fishing.

At 105 years old, Ms. Banks has outlived her contemporaries as well as all of her younger siblings. With her hearing nearly gone, her caregiver, Cathy, patiently repeated my questions. Even though details from Ms. Banks' past may not come to her mind quite as quickly as before her recent bout with COVID, there was no doubt that she was fully present and understood everything said. “Are you comfortable?” she asked when I leaned forward from the sofa to catch her soft-spoken words on my recorder.

How Cathy came to be her caregiver is quite a story in itself. “She and my aunt were neighbors in Lyons for many years. Ms. Banks was in her late 90s when my aunt became her caregiver,” said Cathy. “I met Ms. Banks at my aunt’s house when she was 102. I always enjoyed listening to her stories. She once told me that she ‘accidently’ met Dr. Martin Luther King.

“How did that happen?” I asked.

“Ms. Banks saw a crowd of people outside someone’s house and went to check it out,” said Cathy. “Somehow, she got pushed inside with the crowd, and in walked Dr. King.”

But the thing that really brought Cathy and Ms. Banks together was their shared passion for fishing, “I started taking her fishing with me while she was in my aunt’s care,” said Cathy. “Ms. Banks baited the hook herself, cast the rod, and even took the fish she caught off the hook herself.”

When Cathy’s aunt had to have back surgery, Ms. Banks went into the nursing home. She had never had children, and without a caregiver, there seemed no other option. “Because of COVID,” said Cathy, “no one could visit, and she couldn’t leave. Even though Ms. Banks was 104, I knew she was still in good health. But I felt like she would quickly decline in there alone with all the visiting restrictions.”

Robie Banks with her caergiver Cathy McLendon

Cathy had never worked in healthcare. After high school, she attended college in Atlanta with the intention of teaching school. But by the time she graduated with her bachelor of science in mathematics, she said, “I knew I didn’t want to teach in a school setting.” Instead, she found her niche in tutoring students outside the classroom. After Ms. Banks had been in the nursing home for two or three weeks, Cathy said, “I really thought it through. I knew it would change my life in every way. I work full-time as a supervisor in quality control at Chicken of the Sea in Lyons. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had to try.”

Cathy tried to communicate with Ms. Banks through the nursing home window. But with the thick glass and Ms. Banks' loss of hearing, it was futile. “So, I went to the store and bought a notebook and a black magic marker,’ said Cathy. When she came back, she wrote in big letters: “I’m going to break you out of there.” Ms. Banks smiled and gave her a thumbs up.

Cathy consulted with a social worker and representative with Adult Protective Services. “I said, ‘What do I need to do to get Ms. Banks out of here?’” The process was complicated, but Cathy wasn’t giving up. She couldn’t give up her job, but committed to pay another caregiver to be with Ms. Banks when she was at work. Finally, Ms. Banks was released from the nursing room into Cathy’s care in January 2021.

“How is her health?” I asked. I figured she must have some kind of good genes to still be moving about at 105.

“COVID was tough on her,” said Cathy, “but she’s getting her strength back.”

Honestly, Ms. Banks had to be the definition of resilience. I’d learned that the older woman had already survived both breast cancer and stomach cancer in her lifetime.

“Ms. Banks, what is the secret to a long life?” I asked. Was it lifestyle? Diet? Her favorite things are Coca-Cola, vanilla ice cream, and fried fish, which she has as often as she can. If that kind of diet would get you to 105, somebody has been fooling us all.

Ms. Banks looked up and me and smiled. “Well,” she said, “I used to think about that a lot. But I don’t anymore. You live while you live, and you die when you die. You do one or the other.”

I thought about that. A lot, actually. And I came to this conclusion: Even though Ms. Banks has over a century of memories, she doesn’t live her life looking back or looking forward. She lives fully in the present moment. She hasn’t forgotten the people she’s loved, but she isn’t trapped in grief for the loss of the past nor is she afraid of the future. Her outlook on life reminded me of a Bible verse that says, “…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (NIV Matthew 6:34).

If the secret to long life has to do with diet, Ms. Banks's has found a good combination in her favorite things: vanilla ce cream, Coca-Cola, and fried fish.

Even though Ms. Banks and her family are the focus of this story, it’s also about Cathy McClendon. A young forty-something woman who values the life of an elderly woman so much that she “broke her out” of a nursing home to take personal responsibility for her care. In a world where there seems little honor and respect these days for those beyond a certain age, that’s pretty remarkable. In an article on forbes.com, Percil Stanford writes, “The moniker ‘senior citizen’ tends to cast a shadow that suggests a ‘lessthan quality,’ particularly one of dependence. The ‘older person’ should be a symbol of strength and a repository of treasured experiences and wisdom. We can ill afford to not avail ourselves of all that everyone has to offer throughout their life span.” Truly, it was an honor to meet both Ms. Banks and her caregiver.

Once more, I pulled up the YouTube video Cathy posted this past year of Ms. Banks discussing her love for fishing. “I don’t care if I caught anything,” says Ms. Banks. “Just the idea of being there….Sometime[s] I have my pole, and I can catch red-eye.” She laughs, and I laugh with her.