Optimism and effort can carry you far.

Mix in a little good health and you'll have a life something like Geraldine Priddey, who today enjoys a clear mind and fond memories at the age of 100.

"You have to persevere," Priddey explained in the sunshine outside her Luthercare home. "You have to keep thinking that things will get better."

And get better they did.

For Priddey, life began on hard terms.

She was born in Westmoreland County to Lawrence and Anna Cope, a farming couple of modest means.

When she was 3, the family moved to Canton, Ohio, where her father briefly worked in a mill before returning to farm life.

Three years later, Priddey's mother passed away from influenza and pneumonia in the midst of an epidemic.

"It was a bad time," Priddey said. "The doctors were rushing around and didn't have a lot of medicine to give to the people who were sick."

Without her mother's support the family eventually divided.

"We just couldn't survive with that," she said, "so my aunt took me back to Pennsylvania, and I went into nursing school."

Priddey graduated from Greensburg High School and completed nursing training at Westmoreland Hospital, where she then worked.

On Aug. 21, 1937, she married Samuel Priddey, a high school friend who once drove her to school.

They went to Atlantic City, N.J., for their honeymoon.

"We didn't have any money to gamble," Priddey laughed.

Her husband was a buyer at Kaufmann's and Gimbels department stores, often commuting to work by train.

After marriage, Priddey's work at the hospital slowed down.

"If you were married, you couldn't work in a hospital," she said. "Things were bad financially, and they felt that the young people needed to work."

She accepted cases on an on-call basis, occasionally committing to patients for as long as nine months.

"I didn't get called very much because there wasn't any money around," she said, " but I was lucky — I got some long cases."

In 1940, the Priddey household expanded with the addition of its first child, Marjorie.

World War II came and went, Priddey's husband being too old for the draft, and in 1946 the Priddey's gave birth to their second child, Samuel Brian.

After a brief move to Atlanta they settled in Drexel Hill, where Priddey remained until her husband's death in 1992.

Priddey's children are retired and live locally.

Looking back, Priddey recalls dancing in the big-band era of Oliver Nelson and Guy Lombardo.

"They had really good music," she said. "I'm not a music person, but I like to dance. I don't think we have any good dancers anymore."

Today, she enjoys reading mysteries and biographies and spending time with her family.

She has seven great-grandchildren, treasuring with particular affection the ample baby-sitting she did for 9-year-old Conor Marley of West Chester.

"I hope they love me as much as I love them," she said.

 jpianka@lnpnews.com