When the nurse laid newborn Lydia Lesher beside her mother for the first time, the baby was blue from lack of oxygen.

"She probably won't make it through the night," the nurse said.

That was in 1910.

Now, 101 years later, Lydia (now Lydia Weaver) is clear-eyed and healthy in her West Chestnut Street home.

And she remembers quite a bit.

"I was born in a house on a hill near Parkesburg," Weaver said. "I didn't come to Lancaster until I was 6."

She has lived here ever since, and she can recall a city most might barely recognize.

Her workplace of 20 years has been little used since the 1970s.

"Every day I walked from Frederick Street to Rossmere," she said. "I was a 'warper' at Stehli's silk mill. We made the starts of parachutes for the Army."

Weaver said her employment at the mill began in the late 1930s. Around the same time, she eloped with her boyfriend, Earl Weaver, while both still lived with their parents. The newlyweds returned home and kept their marriage a secret for two years.

Weaver speaks fondly of the many road trips the young couple took in their Chrysler DeSoto. "We went all over New England," she said, "and to Ontario and the lakes."

During WWII, her husband enlisted in the U.S. Navy and spent two years on Attu Island, the westernmost of Alaska's Aleutian island chain.  Weaver wrote to him twice a day, every day, and maintained the family at home. At the same time, materials she produced  at work helped supply American soldiers abroad.

Weaver regards her diligence and financial stability during this period as her life's proudest moment.

After the war, Earl Weaver worked as a mechanic at Armstrong and Kerr Glass.  He retired in 1973 and died two years later of lung cancer.

In addition to her husband, Lydia Weaver outlived all nine of her siblings. She attributes this to never smoking, drinking only lightly and avoiding fat. "I pick the fat from bologna," she said with a grin.

Asked who was her favorite U.S. president, Weaver said that "Kennedy was exciting" and that she "liked Jacqueline." She declined to admit her least favorite, saying, "I don't want to blacken anybody."

She said that the airplane's evolution had been a great surprise, but expressed bafflement over the disappearance of the Watt & Shand department store, except for its facade, from downtown Lancaster.
jpianka@lnpnews.com