My great-grandmother was a vaudeville comic and lived to 96. Here are her secrets to longevity.
The author’s great-grandmother standing in front of the biplane she and her husband traveled in.
At 54, I’ve reached the age my great-grandmother was when she stood onstage at county fairs in a red satin gown, tossing juggling clubs to my great-grandfather on his tightwire and setting up punchlines for his jokes. She’d experienced a lifetime full of glamourous international travel; she’d live another 42 years, thanks — she said — to a couple of secrets.
You won’t find her given name, Lydia Howery, in newspapers. That’s because she ran away from her family’s farm to join the circus, changed her name to Mary, married my great-grandfather, and developed a comedy and wire-walking act for vaudeville audiences.
She and my great-grandfather took their act all over
They billed themselves “Hap Hazard, the Careless Comedian, and Mary Hart, Who Cares Less,” flying from theater to theater in a biplane. As my great-grandfather neared each town, he flipped the plane over so people below could read “Hap Hazard” painted on the wings.
“Not many towns had airports, so we landed in cow fields,” Mary recounted once she’d retired in her 60s and moved in with my grandmother. “Once, we ran out of fuel and made an emergency landing in the middle of Harvard University. Boy, were their deans mad!”
Mary Hart and her husband traveled around the country in a biplane.
I loved laughing with her
As a young adult, I found her hilarious. We worked out an arrangement: I’d bake cookies and trim her fingernails. She’d deliver lectures illustrated by snapshots, headshots, and theater programs she’d amassed in trunks that accompanied her to European theaters and USO tours.
“Have I told you how I smoked marijuana with the theater’s jazz band?” she’d ask at her kitchen table. I’d shake my head and feign ignorance, setting up her punchline as she’d done for my great-grandfather over decades.
“No,” I’d say, getting out cookie ingredients. “Tell me!”
She’d flash me a mischievous smile. “Oh,” she’d say, “it made the 16th notes go by real slow.”
She worked through grief by making people laugh
Treating life as a comic performance sustained her. My great-grandfather died in a plane crash when she was 70; her four sisters died, one by one. Through her grief, Mary resolved to make people laugh. “Have I ever told you,” she began, “how your grandma got lost as a toddler, and we found her curled up asleep in the elephant barn?”
My grandma, Mary’s caregiver in later years, would sigh wearily before going to swim laps in her backyard pool. “Keep an eye on Mother,” she would tell me.
Mary Hart lived to the age of 96.
She walked laps around the house and did bicep curls
I only had eyes for my great-grandmother. She ramped up the comedy in the family lore and looked up from “People Magazine” to deliver comic meditations on the stars. Mornings, she did laps around the house with her walker and performed bicep curls with cans of green beans, singing “You are My Sunshine” to her cockatiels.
Afterward, she played a game with my grandmother to see who could find a funny story in the newspaper. Some evenings, she’d still be at it, combing the classifieds for entertainment. Then, she did what she believed to be the key to her longevity: a nightly shot of apricot brandy with an apple cider vinegar chaser.
Laughter sustained her, right up until she died
Mary didn’t tell me her other secret outright. Rather, she embodied it by treating every interaction as if she were on stage. Generous with stories and jokes, still with the same gorgeous smile from the newspaper clippings around her, she determined to entertain everyone she met.
Shortly after her 96th birthday, she and my grandmother commenced their newspaper game. My grandmother walked upstairs for her glasses. When she returned, she found her mother slumped in her chair. Mary’s mouth was open, her peaceful expression unmistakable.
My great-grandmother had died laughing.
