Did We Hear That Right? She’s How Old?

We wrote on this date last year about what was then the 103rd birthday of Phyllis A. Whitney. So we won’t bother recapping her lengthy career, during which she has produced scores of novels to satisfy both the juvenile and adult markets. However, we can’t help but stand in amazement at the fact that Whitney was born in 1903 ... which was the same year that the first transatlantic radio broadcast shot from the United States to England, Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso made his American debut in New York City, and aircraft inventor Orville Wright flew the first documented (and successful) powered, heavier-than-air flight in North Carolina. Think about it: she took her first breath three years before the calamitous San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.

Hell, if we’re lucky enough to still around at age 104, we’re going to eat our body weight in chocolate cake and dance a jig on Broadway.

Ms. Whitney probably doesn’t intend to do anything of that same order today, but she is receiving birthday wishes via her Web site. You can drop her a line here.