Centenarians

By CASEY COLLIER
Franklin Health Care & Rehabilitation Center is now home to three centenarians who celebrated birthdays in the last couple of months, two of which are new to the club, and all of which have some stories to tell.
Winnie Champagne and Gurtie Bouton are the newcomers to the 100-year or better club, and Dorothy Butler, already a member, recently turned 107.
All of these ladies are residents at FHCC, Champagne and Butler having celebrated in March, on the fifth and 16th respectively; and Bouton last Sunday.
Of Champagne, FHCC reported in a released statement, “Mrs. Winnie exercises daily with FHCC’s restorative team and can be observed walking down the hall with a walker quite rapidly. She is also involved in other exercises without a lot of effort, to keep her in shape.
“When asked what advice she would give to younger people, she replied, ‘Get rid of those phones, go to work and stop watching so much TV.’
“As a pastime she enjoys listening to mystery books on her audio device.” She says she goes through about a book a day.
Champagne also said she doesn’t know to what she should attribute her longevity, but added with a chuckle that she doesn’t feel any differently, having turned 100.
She said that when it came time to celebrate her big day, “Parties were outlawed.” Instead, she visited with her son and daughter-in-law.
Though she hasn’t the eyesight for it anymore, Champagne remarked that if she could, she would have loved to have celebrated with needlepointing.
When asked her opinion of the future, she opined, “We have become a voiceless people. We have become too dependent on our telephones and the internet,” adding, “It isn’t very entertaining to have someone visit you and spend their time on the telephone. It’s not very flattering.”
Bouton was also available to speak, and said of her birthday, “I had a big birthday. It felt really good. With all the stuff they gave me, I just had to turn around and say, ‘Thank you.’”
She is originally from New Iberia and used to be a hair dresser.
She shared that she also loved to dance when she was younger, and would tap her toes to just about any music she could find.
She is fluent in French and said she speaks it “beaucoup” when she has the opportunity.
Pointing to a portrait of her 40-year-old self, she smilingly admitted that she could usually be found dressed in white, because that was her color.
Butler was unavailable for interview, but hails from Glencoe, and was the youngest of three siblings.
She was two years of age when her father passed away, after which her mother could not afford to take care of her, so Butler was taken to Sager Brown Orphanage in Baldwin, now UMCOR, where she is purported to have learned from an early age, the value of hard work.
She married Clarence Guienze, at the age of 18, and they had two children, Clarence John Guienze and Lavera Brent.
Though she was raised in an orphanage, Butler remained very close to her mother, who was a seamstress, and who taught Butler to sew.
According to FHCC, her first job was a shirter in a pressing shop, which provided her with the ability to send her son to college with the money she earned.
She later went on to work for the late Dr. Larry Mouch, who sent her to take a nursing course at the former St. Anne’s Hospital, now the site of the Franklin Police Department, where she began private duty nursing.
She also furthered her training at the Vocational School in Morgan City and became a certified nursing aide.
All three ladies, Champagne, Bouton and Butler, can say they have matured to an age that fewer people reach than don’t, with experiences from a time foreign to most of our memories.
However, the numbers of years aged is not even the most impressive part of their conditions, though indeed impressive; it is the experiences those years have afforded, and what that must feel like.
The number indicates where they are, but how they got there… they must tell that themselves.