Next month Marie Maxwell will celebrate her 100th birthday during a party at Eudora Nursing Center.

“I don’t think about it much,” Maxwell said when asked about reaching the century mark. “I enjoy living. I’ve got this dumb little old apartment here, and I kind of like it.”

Irene Morris has been there and done that. In August she turned 102. She lives in the skilled nursing branch of the Health Center at Brandon Woods Retirement Community, 1501 Inverness Drive.

“It feels terrible,” Morris said of her age. “It’s no fun. You can’t go out. You can’t go shopping. I’m tired of being old.”

Maxwell and Morris are members of a special population that aging experts say will only increase in coming years. In the late 1990s there were more than 700 centenarians in Kansas, according to the 2000 Census, the latest statistics available.

The women in that category vastly outnumber the men — 583 to 127. Of that group, three men and three women are more than 110 years old, the census showed.

In Douglas County, the census found 18 centenarians — three men and 15 women. A recent check with local nursing homes found one woman who was 109 and another who was 106.

Around 1900, the average life expectancy was the early 40s. Though people lived beyond their 40s, the high number of infant deaths dropped the life-expectancy average. Today, life expectancy in the United States is 77, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The average age of someone in a nursing home, however, is 82.

Irene Morris, left, is a resident in the skilled nursing branch at the Health Center of Brandon Woods Retirement Community, 1501 Inverness Drive, and recently celebrated her 102nd birthday.

The 20th century saw dramatic increases in life expectancy because of better medical care, drugs, public health practices and access to all of the above, said Mercedes Bern-Klug, a senior research associate and social worker on aging at University of Kansas Hospital.

“In the early part of the century more people survived infancy,” Bern-Klug said. “In the mid-century on, once people made it to old age, more people were living longer in old age.”

In the 1960s Medicare was established and more people had access to better health care, Bern-Klug said. Since the 1960s more drugs have been and continue to be developed, she said.

‘Seen so much’

During their lifetimes Maxwell and Morris have witnessed two world wars and a lot of little ones, the development of the automobile and air travel, space flight and men on the moon, the nuclear bomb and the 9-11 terrorist attacks. They have lived under the reigns of 18 presidents.

“I’ve just seen so much,” Maxwell said, shaking her head. “There were so many things.”

Maxwell grew up on a family farm near Vandalia, Mo., southwest of Hannibal. She fixed fences, herded and milked cows. She attended but didn’t graduate from high school, then made her way to Kansas City, Mo., where she worked in Harzfeld’s department store.

She kept her job through the Great Depression and made trips with store buyers to St. Louis and New York. She said she dated several men and liked to go dancing.

Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photo Irene Morris, left, is a resident in the skilled nursing Eudora Nursing Center resident Marie Maxwell, right, turns 100 next month. Morris and Maxwell are members of a select population that aging experts say will only increase in coming years as the life expectancy of Americans increases.

“I think I was kind of wild,” Maxwell said. “I thought I was somebody important, but I really wasn’t.”

Maxwell married, then divorced. She had two daughters and a son. Only one of her daughters is still alive, and she is living elsewhere.

Maxwell also learned how to play bridge and got together with other women who played.

“I still want to play, but I don’t have anybody to play with,” she said.

Morris grew up in Toronto, Kan., and managed a women’s specialty store in Coffeyville. She married a structural engineer and eventually ended up in Lawrence. Her hobby was needlepoint.

She considers her wedding and the birth of her only child — a son now living in Shawnee — among the memorable days of her life.

“My son was a pilot on a B-17 bomber,” she said. “He came back in good condition (from World War II). That was the happiest time of my life.”

Different stock

Neither Morris nor Maxwell have any idea why they have lived so long. They don’t remember anyone else in their families living to be 100 years old. They haven’t done anything special, they said.

Heredity is a factor with some centenarians, Bern-Klug said. Other factors are environment, behavior and pure luck.

“If you make it to your 90s, you’re kind of different from the people you’ve survived,” Bern-Klug said. “You seem to be of sort of a different stock.”

¢U.S. Census QuickFact for Kansas

Just how long can a human being live? Jeanne Calment, a French woman, lived to be 122 before she died in 1997.

“I think that is the outer limit,” Bern-Klug said.

‘Crazy as hell’

Maxwell said she didn’t do much now except sit in an easy chair in her room, read a newspaper and sometimes watch television. Sometimes she leaves the room just to walk the halls.

“There are some people here who are older, but they don’t act as crazy as I do,” Maxwell said with a laugh. “They think I’m crazy as hell.”

Morris gave her television to a grandson about six months ago.

“How can you watch it if you can’t see and hear it,” she said. “When you get to be 102, you don’t keep up with much.”

There is debate in the medical community about whether more effort should be placed on finding ways to improve the quality of life for people who live to old age, Bern-Klug said.

Among the common ailments that decrease quality of life for the old are vision and hearing losses.

“Instead of just getting people to live as long as they can, maybe we should be trying to take care of things like arthritis that wouldn’t necessarily kill people but really affect people’s quality of life,” Bern-Klug said.

Both Morris and Maxwell have relatives who regularly stop by to check on them. Many residents of nursing homes, however, do not. Many of those over 100 have outlived their children and close friends. Bern-Klug said she thought community groups could step in with volunteers to fill that void.

“The social connections are so important to humans,” she said.

Holding back

Maxwell said she had nothing special she wanted to do on Nov. 24 when she turns 100. But when prodded by a visitor, she laughed and said she wouldn’t mind skinny dipping.

“I’ve done it many other times,” she said. “There’s a lot of crap I could tell you, but I don’t tell it all.”