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Overcast ‘Miss Minnie’ cooks up a long, faithful life
Woodmere Rehab resident turns 105
It’s not every day when somebody turns 105 years old.
Minnie P. Harris did just that on April 10. The Woodmere Rehabilitation and Health Care Center, where she lives, honored her with a birthday party on April 26. Family and friends came out to celebrate. She also received a citation from the Nassau County Office of Constituent Affairs, presented to her by Kim Collins, the program’s director.
Harris was born in Clintonville, Coffee, Alabama in 1910. She helped her father, four brothers and four sisters working on their farm. Known as “Ms. Minnie” to her family and friends, she came to Inwood around the time she turned 25. She lived in Inwood most of her life, until she came to the health center a few years ago.
Harris doesn’t remember much of her childhood, mostly working on what she thought was a big farm, picking cotton, shaking peanuts, and pulling and packing corn and beans.
One of her favorite memories is her mother’s cooking, Harris said, and it’s also why she herself enjoyed cooking. “My mother’s biscuits, chicken and fish, I remember how good they tasted,” she said. “I loved doing what my mother did. I loved baking, especially cakes and cookies.” Harris said that people used to enjoy her vanilla cakes when she baked, and that was their favorite dish of hers to make.
Moving to Inwood in 1935, Harris said she served as a domestic worker with another woman, living in a room on the property she helped care for every day. “I did cooking, washed floors and cleaned the house,” she said. “I had a very nice room, with a bed, TV and radio. I loved that I didn’t have to walk to my job, as I lived right where I worked.”
Harris believes that the secret to life longevity for her was her devotion to her faith. “I stayed in church,” she said. “We sang all the time, about Jesus, about love, and about what it would be like when I go to heaven. I sang these songs. I went to Methodist, Baptist, Catholic churches—I went to lots, all different kinds. The churches are no different from one another, really. Singing, praying and going to church is what’s kept me living a long life.”
