Happy Birthday: 108-year-old Germaine Weed

Born in 1900 and a longtime resident of uptown New Orleans, Germaine Weed was transferred during Hurricane Katrina from a nursing home in Jefferson Parish to the New Roads nursing home she now calls home.

“My hands are cold. They are cold all the time,” Weed said when asked what it feels like to be 108. “I’m alone in this world. Isn’t that terrible,” Weed said. “I don’t do much of anything. I sit around all day. I’m too old to have friends.”

Her hearing is not what it used to be. People have to yell to be heard. And, although past the century mark, she takes no medicine, her nurses said. None.

Weed lived alone until she was 101, when she fell and broke her hip. When she was 93, she walked alone from her Burdette Street home to a Mardi Gras parade on St. Charles Avenue. She was mugged on the way to the parade.

“They took her purse and knocked her down. She was OK, though,” LeVan said.

Weed and her husband, Frank Weed, who died at 75 about 30 years ago, never had children.

LeVan said her aunt loved to get up early, drink lots of coffee and read the newspaper from front to back each day.

She said Weed loved to watch the New Orleans Saints win and lose football games on Sundays as well as shop in the French Quarter and listen to symphonies performed by the city’s orchestra.

Weed is “unique,” Pointe Coupee Healthcare Activity Director Karen LeBlanc said.

“She does whatever she wants. Today, we tried to do her hair and you would have thought we were trying to kill her,” LeBlanc said, smiling.

Frances Lawson lives across the hall from Weed. “We are friends. She is a very independent woman and she doesn’t ask anybody for anything,” Lawson, 88, said.

Lawson, also from New Orleans, used to live at Jefferson Health Care in Jefferson Parish with Weed before both were transferred to Pointe Coupee Healthcare during the storm.

Weed also loves sweets. During her birthday party, she devoured two large slices of birthday cake — eating the white icing first — and then nibbled on chocolate candy.

When asked how she’s managed to live so long, Weed didn’t answer. No matter how loud and how often the question was asked, she just couldn’t hear it.