A woman at the Westhaven Nursing Home celebrated her 107th birthday Thursday with a parade.
Myda Lewis always dreamed of being in a parade. The dream started
"I’d like to ride in one of those cars... open cars sometimes instead of just looking down on them to see what it was like," Lewis.
During her 100 years living in Stillwater, Lewis worked at a clothing store on Main Street. She remembers looking out of the window of the store at parades pass by.
After telling her health care workers her idea, they jumped into action.
"We were literally just going to drive her down Main Street and we went down and told some of the merchants 'At 12:15 would you come out and wave to her and make it feel like a parade?'" Donald Lewis, the administrator of the Westhaven Nursing Home, said.
After they put the idea out on social media, it took off. People she did not know lined the streets.
Nursing home staff said they think people needed something positive like this.
"Not Fourth of July. Not Labor Day. Nothing," Jared Cranke who attended the parade said. "For someone, they don’t know. It’s nice to see people just get together and say 'Yeah this is something I can get behind' and it’s something good."
It was a day completely about her. She got flowers. People stopped by to sing to her. A man brought by a baby horse. And she had a parade.
The fun did not stop there. The nursing home threw her a party. Her son, who is 90-years old, and her daughter attended the party too.
She was fashionably late because the birthday princess needed to freshen up.
"She had to have her make up done just right," Kerry Cronin, a social worker for Physician's Choice Hospice, said. "And her clothes just right, and her lipstick just right. And her eyebrows... she had to do those herself."
Westhaven Nursing Home wants to do something even bigger when Lewis turns 108-years old.
"Now I haven’t thought that far ahead," Lewis said.
Lewis said the key to staying so youthful is to stay active.
"Exercise. Walk. Use weights and anything else you can come around," Lewis said.
Lewis moved to Stillwater from Enid when she was 7-years old in a horse and buggy. During her life, she has worked as an artist painting portraits.
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