Louise Zdellar was 103 this past November, when she fell in her kitchen the day before Thanksgiving.

She refused to push the Life Alert button she wears. She was afraid of being forced to leave her home if her family thought she couldn’t take care of herself. She knew they would be coming the next day to spend the holiday with her.

So, she spent the night on the kitchen floor.

Her family eventually convinced her that she would be safer in a nursing facility.

“I always thought I was going to stay in my home,” she said. “But there comes a point when you have to go.”

Her family gathered recently to celebrate their four February birthdays. Zdellar, who goes by Weezie, turned 104 this month; also celebrating are her daughter, Judy McGrath (turning 73), her granddaughter, Kristen Statler (turning 37) and her great-grandson, Killian Statler, (turning 2).

They sang “Happy Birthday,” and the four of them blew out the candles on the cake together.

Kristen Statler, who hosted the party in her home, said it reminded her of joint birthday celebrations growing up.

Weezie, born in 1916 in south St. Louis, has lived here her entire life. She reflected on the changes she’s seen in her lifetime. She remembers when a lamplighter would illuminate the streetlights in the days when her neighborhood street was made of brick. During Prohibition, she made “home brew” with her father. She went to Roosevelt High School, then transferred to a vocational school. Shell Oil Co. hired her as a messenger girl when she was 16. She would take the streetcar to work downtown. She met her future husband, Peter, at a dance hall when big band dances were the rage.

She became a homemaker, and they raised two children. She remembers how amazing it was when the family first got a television.

“It was a wonderful invention,” she said.

She finally got her driver’s license when she was 52. The officer asked her why she waited so long, and she explained that her family had one car, which her husband drove to work. She was able to walk where she needed in the neighborhood.

Once she started driving, though, she didn’t want to stop. Even at the age of 102, she went by herself to get her license renewed, and still drove her 1993 Ford Tempo to the grocery store and nearby appointments. When she finally gave up her wheels in 2018, the 25-year-old car had 80,000 miles on it.

“I sure miss when I could get in the garage, hop in the car and go to the store,” she said.

At 104, she still has a valid driver’s license.

Weezie has been on her own for quite some time now. Peter died nearly 50 years ago, when he was 61 and she was 55; they were married just shy of 30 years. She says she had a lot of suitors when she was single, but she didn’t go steady with any of them.

“It had to be the real thing,” she said, and that’s what she had with Peter.

“I was happy all the time with him,” she said, and wishes he could have lived to see his grandchildren.

Now, she’s on hospice care with the service where her granddaughter, Kristen, works. If Weezie thinks this might be her last birthday, she doesn’t show it. She poses with her family for numerous photos. She tosses a ball (while sitting in her chair) to her 3-year-old great-granddaughter, who chases after it.

“I’m still here, and He’s letting me keep my wits about me, and that’s important,” she said, referring to God.

Weezie may not have her car or live on her own anymore, but she still has her independent spirit.

After last year’s Thanksgiving dinner, the family brought out Scattergories.

Despite her fall and the night spent on the floor, Weezie won two rounds.

The organizer of the event I was covering rushed over when I entered, and said one of the students there claimed to know me.

“She says you changed her life,” said Debra Kennard, a board member of the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis, the nonprofit hosting the event. About 300 people had gathered to recognize students who had benefited from the organization’s work.

I had no idea who Kennard was talking about, but followed her through the crowd. As soon as I saw Andrea Perez and her mother, there was no hesitation.

“Oh my God!” I shrieked as I threw my arms around the mom. (Perez asked me not to use her parents’ names.) It had been several years since we’d seen each other. When my children were younger and needed constant chauffeuring, she would come over once a month to help me keep up with household chores. Over the years, we developed a friendship. Her children were only a few years older than mine, and she reminded me of my own mom: an immigrant woman working incredibly hard for her family.

Her English was still improving, but we spoke that common language of parental worry and angst. She was particularly concerned about Andrea, then a junior in high school. Her daughter was smart, but more interested in her boyfriend and friends than in her schoolwork, she told me. My eldest child/auntie instinct kicked into overdrive.

“Let me talk to her,” I said. Her mom promised to bring her over soon for a heart-to-heart. True to her word, she showed up with a teenager who seemed mildly annoyed at the prospect of being lectured by a stranger.

Fair enough. What teenager wouldn’t be?

I told Andrea that I was also the oldest child of working-class immigrant parents, and that I knew how hard it was growing up in a nearly all-white, affluent community. Andrea’s attitude immediately changed.

“That was the first time I talked to someone who I could relate to like that,” she said. Looking back, she admits that she had been far more concerned with fitting in with her white peers than her education. Her GPA from her first couple of years of high school was around a 2.0. I told her she was capable of better.

It’s funny how the teenage brain will reject this kind of feedback from a parent, but is willing to consider it from an outsider.

I advised Andrea to ask the school counselor if she could enroll in Missouri’s A+ Scholarship Program, which gives qualified students an opportunity to earn two free years at community college after graduation. She took our conversation to heart. She ended her senior year with a 3.5 GPA and met all the requirements for the scholarship. She would be the first person in her family to go to college.

A month before her classes were scheduled to start, the community college contacted her and told her she was not eligible for the grant because of her DACA status. Republicans in the state passed legislation that required public colleges to charge DACA students international student fees. She had to come up with $4,000 to attend that semester. Her mother picked up more houses to clean in an already packed schedule, and her father took on additional hours of lawn care.

Andrea studied hard, applied for scholarships and transferred to Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, which allows DACA students to pay in-state tuition. She plans to graduate next year with a degree in sociology and apply to law school.

I was touched that Andrea remembered that conversation in my living room from nearly six years ago. But we know who and what really changed Andrea’s life.

Her parents, with their sacrifices and love, changed her life. A scholarship changed her life. Her own persistence and hard work changed her life.

“Can you imagine how proud I am?” her mom asked me as we hugged, that night I unexpectedly reconnected with her.

Yes, I can imagine.

When a public official takes issue with something I’ve written, they might email, call or contact an editor if they feel particularly aggrieved.

Missouri’s Health Director Dr. Randy Williams took a more unusual approach. Last year, I wrote a column criticizing his department’s effort to track the menstrual cycles of women seeking services at the one remaining Planned Parenthood in Missouri. After reading it, he dropped off a book and a handwritten note for me at my office. It’s a book written by a conservative Republican about loving your enemies.

I’m not going to get into the merits of the book. Suffice it to say that the author wrote a 217-page manifesto decrying the contempt in political rhetoric and never once mentioned how the current occupant of the White House has taken nastiness in public discourse to new lows. It’s kind of like writing a book about the obesity epidemic and leaving out the role of sugar.

At any rate, I read the entire thing.

Since Williams never specified what he found objectionable in my previous column, I’m going to assume by his choice of book and the note quoting Martin Luther King Jr., “I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate,” that perhaps he confused my criticism with hate or contempt toward him personally.

Rest assured, Randy, I don’t hate you.

I do, however, hate what you have been trying to do to women in this state.

When I think about the repeated attempts by the Republicans in Missouri to take away a woman’s legal right to an abortion, I also think about the sanctity of life.

I think about the life of the college student who called me to take her to the hospital after she had been raped multiple times during a spring break trip. I think about standing by her hospital bed and seeing the fear in her eyes that one of her rapists might have impregnated her. I think about a friend who had a pregnancy scare involving a man from a very conservative family. I remember her shock when his vocally “pro-life” parents offered to pay for her abortion. I think about the young woman who told me she had to leave her parents’ house after she found out she was pregnant. The condom her boyfriend was using had broken, and he offered no help to her. She became homeless -- going from one friend’s house to another -- working a minimum-wage job trying to save up money for the abortion she needed to have any kind of chance at escaping extreme poverty.

These women’s lives matter.

I teach my children the importance and universality of the Golden Rule. If it was your daughter or wife in such a traumatic and difficult situation, how would you want her treated?

Many of us are horrified that our daughters might grow up with fewer rights over their own bodies than we had.

Like you, I’m a person of faith. But I would never seek to impose my religious beliefs about a theological issue on women whose own lives may hang in the balance.

I can respect that getting an abortion is against your religious beliefs.

Thankfully, you will never need to get one.

If I saw the same fervor from state officials toward making sure the 100,000 children dropped from Medicaid in our state had access to health care, it would go a long way toward proving their “pro-life” consistency.

Here’s an area for common ground. Many of us who support a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions also care deeply that all children in our state can go to a doctor, and get medical treatment and medicine when they need it.

I’m all in with you when you want to apply pro-life beliefs there.

You mentioned in your note that you have received death threats and ad hominem attacks in your role. I know how that feels. It’s fascinating to see what the people who call for civility are perfectly willing to overlook from their own side.

If you ever want to discuss the book, feel free to stop by and chat.