Florence Martin of Hampton smiled as she perused more than 60 birthday cards next to her in her living room. She was visibly overwhelmed by the outpouring of love she has gotten from family and friends in reaching her latest milestone.

  “People have been so good to me,” said Martin. “I wish I could give every one of them a hug.”

  Martin celebrates her 105th birthday Wednesday. She expressed her gratitude toward loved ones for reaching out to her.

  “I really appreciate people thinking about an old woman, maybe sacrificing from themselves to share with an old woman,” she said.

  Martin was born on July 8, 1915. One of six siblings, she attended the Liberty Hill School as a child, walking two miles to and from class through the eighth grade.

  “I skipped second grade,” she said. “They thought I was so smart – smart aleck, maybe. We walked from Dorsey Road to Liberty Hill every day. All the kids walked. There were no school busses.”

  Martin grew up on a farm, and was just a young girl when her father passed away. His death, she said, changed life significantly for her and her siblings.

  “We’d walk home from school, and we had to change clothes and go work in the field,” said Martin. “Mama raised six kids — four boys and two girls – by herself. I plowed a mule all day. I had a brother that was older than me and had a heart condition. He wasn’t able to do a lot of hard work, so my younger brother and me – Mama would send him to the field to plow, and I’d take over the plow and he’d chop cotton.”

  While walking to school one day, she met Odus Martin. Their 

relationship, she said, began with him carrying her books.

  “I walked to school with a bunch of kids, and he was older than I was,” said Florence Martin. “He had quit school, so he walked to school with us.”

    She married Odus in 1930, when she was just 16 years old. They were together 42 years, until his death in 1972. Along the way, they raised three children, including David and Betty, and Peggy, who passed away five years ago.

  Martin retired from Southern States in Hampton during the 1960s, and has lived in the same house for more than 60 years. She said she didn’t have any definite plans for her birthday, but that a neighbor planned to help her celebrate with a plate of barbecue pork ribs.

  “I’ve already got my meal ordered, so nobody has to worry about me,” she said.

  David Martin, 76, keeps an eye out for anything his mother needs from day to day. He said he, too, has fond memories of life on the farm, thanks to the values his parents instilled in him.

  “If you didn’t work, you didn’t eat,” he said. “Most of the time, she was working when we had the egg farm. We had 1,000 or 2,000 chickens, and we spent a lot of time looking after chickens, picking up eggs and feeding chickens. Plus, there were some hogs and cows, so we were always busy doing something.

  “Daddy was a pretty good carpenter,” continued David while sitting across from his mother in her living room. “He built two chicken houses and a big barn, him and my uncle. He did most of the work on this house on the inside.”

  David said Florence strives to maintain her independence as much as she can.

  “She’ll turn the light on if she needs anything,” said David. “She’s one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known, even to this day. She would still be cutting grass if she had a lawnmower.”

  Florence is grateful that she has been blessed with good health throughout her long life. She takes just one vitamin a day, is not currently on any medication, and has only spent a handful of days in the hospital in her 105 years.

  Along with feeding a neighborhood cat, and even a nearby fox, she loves watching Atlanta Braves baseball and maintains a nightly snack of chocolate milk and a cookie. Martin acknowledged that she hasn’t let the passage of time slow her down.

  “I’m still trimming bushes,” she said. “I’ve got to keep active. I’ve got to keep going. If I sit down here, I’ll give out. As soon as the Lord’s ready for me to go, He’s gonna let me go, day or night. David’s going to have a job cleaning up this house.”

  Florence said she is proud that she can still take care of her friends and family, including her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

  “That’s been my biggest pleasure – having neighbors and friends to come and visit,” she said. “I enjoy people. I’ve been a lucky old woman, that’s for sure.”