‘To get to 100, that’s something’

Luiza Dasilva celebrates her 100th birthday today.

While many people see a 100th birthday as a major milestone, Daliva downplayed it.

'I don't celebrate my birthday,” she said wryly. 'After you pass 90, you don't celebrate anymore.”

Still, she realizes the significance of reaching the century mark.

'To get to 100, that's something,” she said.

Dasilva acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has put a damper on a celebration.

'Now, we can't even go see a friend because this disease goes around killing people,” she said.

Dasilva was born in Brazil on Dec. 8, 1920, and is one of eight children.

'I have a sister who is 103,” she said. 'She doesn't live alone, though. She lives with one of her daughters (in Brazil).”

In Brazil, she lived in Recife in the state of Pernambuco, on the northeast coast of Brazil.

She also lived in Maceio, the capital city of the state of Alagoas, which is also along the Atlantic coast.

'Brazil is beautiful,” she said. 'Anyone who goes there says, ‘Oh, Brazil is beautiful.'

'Everything is beautiful. There are lots of flowers and big, beautiful trees.”

Dasilva worked in people's houses and took care of many children, something she has done throughout her life.

'Then I got out and had a little money and bought a rooming house that had 11 rooms,” she said. 'I ran that.”

She also worked in a restaurant.

'There was a lot of American servicemen,” Dasilva said. 'I married one of them - a sailor.”

In 1947, her new American sailor husband moved her and her 5-year-old daughter, Maria, to Iowa.

Iowa was quite the change for the 26-year-old who had lived her whole life to that point in Brazil.

She arrived in January, in the dead of an Iowa winter.

'Boy, was it cold,” she said. 'We didn't know about snow. We saw that Bing Crosby White Christmas, but we thought that was just movies.

'I got here and wrote back to some of my friends that there really is ice and snow.”

She spoke no English when she arrived, only speaking her native Portuguese.

'I couldn't speak English, one word,” she said. 'I had a letter that showed the address I was going.”

After settling in Washington, Dasilva was back to her pattern of hard work.

'First, I worked at the button factory,” she said. 'We made 40 cents an hour. When I got my first paycheck, it was $13.10. I cried my eyes out. How am I going to raise a kid with that much money?”

At the factory, she injured one of her fingers, eventually needing surgery because it did not heal correctly.

To this day, she still does not have full function of that finger.

To make extra money, she started babysitting while she was not at work in the factory.

'I babysat for most everyone in town,” Dasilva said. 'My boss from the factory, a lot of times after work, I babysat for his kids. They were the worst about coming home at 2 o'clock in the morning.

'Then, it would be about 3 o'clock when I'd get to bed. About 6 o'clock, I was ready to walk out to where the factory was.”

She has maintained that work ethic for her entire life.

'I just keep on working,” she said, turning her attention to window looking out to the small front yard of her downtown Washington apartment. 'All of those leaves, I raked them up, but they never picked them. I like the yard clean and looking nice.”

Another constant in her life has been her faith.

She has been a member of the St. James Catholic Church parish for decades.

'I like to pray,” she said. 'I pray for the sick people. God answers prayers, you know.”

She also collects ceramic angels.

She has dozens of the figurines on shelves and small tables in her apartment.

'I've been collecting them quite a while,” she said. 'My friends, if they go somewhere and they see one that I don't have, they bring it to me.”

She makes sure to take good care of them, too.

'I like my angels,” she said. 'I dust them, pick up each one and wipe it off and put it down. Then, I wipe the table and put them back on.”

Dasilva, now an American citizen, has not returned to Brazil in about 10 years. She said that her visits back to her native country are some of her favorite memories.

'Years back, when I was working no more, I would go to Brazil to spend Christmas with my family,” she said. 'I November I left and would come back after Christmas.”

Her daughter, Maria, still lives nearby, just outside of Washington, with her husband, Tim Wood.

Reflecting on turning 100 years old, she said she really has no secret to her longevity.

'My mother was 32, and my father was 34 when they passed away,” she said. 'I don't know why I'm here. I never thought I'd live that long.”