KINGSTON, Jamaica — When Zelpha Brown suffered a stroke just two days before her 99th birthday, her family feared they might lose her.

A year later, Brown, affectionately called Mama Brown, has defied the odds, celebrating her 100th birthday on Friday at Vintage Gardens in Spanish Town, surrounded by her children, grandchildren, and close relatives.

“I’m grateful that she lived to see this milestone. She got a stroke last year, two days before her birthday. We didn’t know that she would have made it,” said her daughter, Yvonne Brown Coley. “Now she can talk, although she has a slight speech impairment. Otherwise, she’s okay.”

Coley described her mother reaching this milestone as deeply emotional.

“I’m grateful she lived to see her fourth generation. We prayed last year, and to be celebrating her now brings so much joy. This is her moment,” Coley said.

Born in Clarendon in 1925, Mama Brown’s life was shaped by challenges, having lost her father at an early age, which forced her to grow up quickly. She left home at just 14 years old to work and support herself.

“I go to a place named Frankfield, and me go to me cousin. Him give me a role to work one and six a week, barefoot, no shoes. Me work with that lady and have 14 apartments to clean and carry water,” Brown said in a short documentary produced by her granddaughter, Samantha George, and her husband, Darren George, when she was 93-years-old.

In her later teens, Brown moved to Spanish Town, where she found work and gradually improved her circumstances.

She later met the man who would become her husband, whom she described as loving and faithful.

“Me say, ‘God, provide one old man for me older than me to be a father, a husband, and a caretaker.’ About a year later, me friends call me to Spanish Town. I fixed myself up and go to Bedward Lane, and when me reach, me see this tall, slim man standing in the doorway,” she recalled.

That man would become her husband in 1952. He, however, passed away in 1994.

Throughout her life’s reflection, Mama Brown expressed a desire that her children give their hearts to God, believing faith to be the most important legacy she could leave behind.

“One thing I wish for the five of them [children] is that they give them life to the Lord. That they accept God because after this life is over, we don’t have anything and we are only here for a time,” she said.

Meanwhile, her children attribute the centenarian’s long life to her generous spirit, hard work, and strong belief in God.

“She has been a wonderful person, not just to us but to others. She’s very kind and very caring. She would look after people in the community who were sick or hungry. She would plant a field and give the produce to people in the community,” Coley told Observer Online.

She said faith has played a central role in her mother’s life.

“She’s a praying woman. When she prays for her children and grandchildren, she calls everybody’s name, and she does it about three times per day,” she said.

Another daughter, Valda Martin, praised the centenarian for her humility, resilience, and kindness.

“I remember when I was young, it was a rough neighbourhood sometimes. People would say things to her, and she would never reply. That used to hurt me badly. I would ask her, ‘Why don’t you answer them?’ She would say, ‘No, leave them to time,’ and she would go right back and help those same people who verbally abused her,” she added.

Martin said her mother taught her valuable lessons that continue to guide her marriage.

“She always said, ‘Don’t go to bed angry with your husband.’ Silence breeds so many things. If you keep doing it, it becomes a pattern, and one day you just get up and leave. I live by that advice,” Martin told Observer Online.
She also recalled a moment that strengthened her own faith.

“One Friday evening, we had no food in the house. She told me to light the stove and prepare the pot. I was hesitant, but she insisted. About 20 minutes later, my brother-in-law drove in with a trunk full of every kind of food you could imagine. That was her faith in God. She believed provision would come, and it did,” she said.

Alan Brown, Mama Brown’s son, described his mother as a God-fearing woman who worked tirelessly to care for her five children.

“She always found a way to feed us. I don’t know where she got the money to buy some of the food we couldn’t grow ourselves. We didn’t have a lot, but she made sure we had clothes and supported my dad in managing the household, even with little or nothing,” he said.

Alan said she also instilled values that continue to guide him today.

“One of the main things is hard work, dedication to family, love for your family, and a strong faith and belief system,” he added.