104 years of life and 2 pandemics can't stop Doris Mahannah

One of Doris Mahannah’s earliest memories is of waking up as a small child in Virginia, unable to get out of bed because of how sick she was.
Her mother came and picked her up and made sure she ate and was cared for until she was nursed back to health. Her baby brother was sick later and Mahannah remembers her mother making a grim prediction as she held the little boy in her arms, wrapped in a quilt.
“She looked over at me and said, Doris, I think our little baby is going to die,” Mahannah said last week, sitting comfortably in her Hart County home. “He had the flu. There were a lot of people who died.”
It wasn’t just any flu. They had contracted the Spanish flu, an especially deadly influenza that infected roughly 500 million people in four waves from 1918 to 1920.
That was the first major pandemic Mahannah experienced. Roughly 100 years later, now 104 years old, she is living through another pandemic, this time with a lifetime of memories.
Much like during the Spanish flu, wearing masks is encouraged and in some places mandatory. People are being asked to keep their distance from one another and America is in many cases literally fighting for it’s life.
“Well its changed my daily routine because I don’t get out and go anywhere,” Mahannah said. “I call my neighbor and we visit, but we stay some distance apart.”
Mahannah still has her driver’s license and sometimes makes short trips to places around town. She has seen technology change drastically since her youth, when she remembers her parents having a horse and buggy.   
She remembers people during the flu pandemic chopping wood for families that were sick, or cooking for them. Today, she said her neighbor will ask her what she needs and will pick it up for her from the store.
At her advanced age, Mahannah is spending most of her time at home during the pandemic, which suits her and her hobby just fine. Mahannah is a master seamstress and sews for hours everyday making baby pajamas for Tiny Stitches, a group of volunteers who sew, knit, crochet and quilt items for newborns in need of clothing and bedding. The organization began when five North Georgia ladies realized many newborns in rural Georgia were leaving hospitals without enough clothing and bedding.
It’s an initiative close to Mahannah’s heart. After all, she was a teenager when the Great Depression ravaged the U.S. economy following the stock market crash of 1929. She had been sewing since she was about 9 or 10 years old, learning from her mother who sewed all of her clothes. Mahannah remembers being the only girl at school to have new dresses because her mother would sew them for her.
Her mother’s skills with a needle and thread were passed down and following a stint during World War II working at a shell plant making ammunition for the Navy, Mahannah went to work for the Loebline Furniture company in Salisbury, N.C. There she sewed custom upholstery for high-end furniture sought by Hollywood stars and presidents.
Mahannah sewed the cushions for dining room chairs at the White House during Richard Nixon’s presidency. She also sewed furniture for Bob Hope, just to name a couple examples.
“This was custom-designed furniture. They would pick out the design and we would make it for them,” she said. “That’s been a long time ago.”
She retired in the early 1980s, beat breast cancer twice, once in 1983 and again in 1987, and eventually moved to Hartwell in 2012, when she was 96.
Mahannah quickly found her place sewing locally for Tiny Stitches. The sewing table in her bedroom is stacked with fabric, sewing materials and nearly complete newborn baby pajamas, each impeccably put together and stitched.
When she’s not sewing, Mahannah will listen to music, enjoy the lake views and read her bible. Her faith is important to her — she is a member at First Presbyterian Church in Hartwell — and she starts everyday with a morning devotional.
She enjoys spending time with her daughter, Marsha, who lives in Marietta, and her grandchildren and great-great children.
Mahannah surfs Facebook to keep up with friends and family, like her 91-year-old brother. After all, at 104, “I have met a lot of people in my life.”
She also exercises each morning and prays daily. That, along with a mostly vegetable diet has kept her healthy and feeling young, Mahannah said.
She doesn’t let 104 years of life stop her from much of anything. Mahannah still makes regular trips to the post office, climbs the stairs to enter — there is no handicapped ramp available — and stands while she waits in line.
“I wake up every morning and thank God he’s let me live another day,” she said.