Emma Frazier celebrates her 100th birthday with six of her seven children. (Special to the American Press)

“Resilient” is one word Emma Frazier’s children use to describe their mother. Born June 2, 1925, she has raised seven children — four boys and three girls — traveled the globe, beat breast cancer and helped others.

Since her husband’s passing 25 years ago, Frazier has lived alone and still tends to her own chores and a daily routine of going to Mass.

“I’ve been by myself now for 25 years and I’ve never hired anyone to do work for me. I do all my mopping and cleaning and everything myself,” Frazier said.

Frazier was raised on a big farm in Kansas, which she remembers fondly.

“There was always work to do, we’d pick berries, had gardens, cows and it was a big farm so we were busy. They made sure you kept busy rather than get in trouble,” she said.

Frazier was one of nine children. Her family did not have electricity or running water for years until after she was married and moved away.

She was first married to a man who was in the Air Force during World War II. When Frazier was 18 and a newlywed, she wanted to get a job to help financially.

“I went to an interview and they asked me if I knew how to ride a bicycle. I said yes and then I got the job,” she said.

Frazier’s job was to deliver blueprints, on a bicycle, in a factory where planes were being built for the war. When she found out she was expecting, she left the job to become a mother.

Her husband was deployed in England when their first child, Sharon, arrived and didn’t get to meet his daughter until she was eight months old. While he was away, Frazier moved back into her parents’ home.

“They didn’t really want me to get married young so it was kind of like, ‘I told you so,’ but it all worked out,” she said chuckling.

Once he returned home they had three more children before he passed away leaving her a widow.

A couple years later, she remarried a man who had also lost his wife and had two young children of his own — one an infant — and the two families became one.

Almost a decade later, Frazier and her husband welcomed a seventh child into their family. She said how having the last child together made her family come together.

“She ‘sistered’ all of them. It really helped to have her because the other children were kind of like strangers to each other when we got married — it was like my kids and his kids. Then we had her and it helped keep them all together,” she said.

Years passed by and Frazier’s husband — who worked on the railroad — heard from friends about DeQuincy and how the pay was much better due to it being between Houston and New Orleans.

“He came down here and tried it out and got his seniority on the railroad and he asked me if I’d consider moving down here. At the time our second-to-youngest had just graduated from high school and was a freshman in college,” she said.

Daughter Janice was 9 when her family moved from Kansas to Louisiana and was the only child to move with them, leaving the oldest six behind.

“It just worked out fine, two of the boys went into the military, two or three of them were in college, they were all on their own — besides Janice. They had the feeling — I think and I did, too— that when they got to be 18 you’re on your own and it was good for them, a lot of kids today don’t do that,” she said.

Once Frazier and her family moved to DeQuincy, the other kids, who were now adults, would take turns to come and visit. Frazier’s family would also go back and forth a couple times a year to Kansas to see her mother who was still living at the time.

Two other families from Kansas, also in the railroad business, moved at the same time as the Fraziers. The three families bought lots next to each other so they could have familiar company next to one another.

“We decided to not rent, so we went out and looked at the lots by the high school, they were for sale so we picked where it would be high up,” Frazier explained.

When her husband was injured on the job, he was hospitalized in New Orleans for six weeks and Frazier stayed with him. Their daughter Janice stayed  with the other two DeQuincy families.

“She stayed three weeks with one neighbor and three weeks with the other neighbor, they took care of her like she was their own child,” she said.

“It was kind of hard to leave the rest of the kids behind and my oldest daughter had just had a baby and my mom was still living, but she’d come down here and she loved coming down to visit,” she said.

One time Frazier’s mother came down on a plane by herself — her first time on a plane — she came down for a surgery her daughter was having and wanted to be with her.

Frazier has seen lots of changes in the last 100 years.

“I think the cost of living takes about two people for a family to work and I know from my kids and grandkids, to even get a babysitter or daycare is so expensive to make ends meet,” she said.

“There was a lot of difference in the way my kids had to work, if they wanted to take a girl to a high school dance and wanted to give the girl a corsage, they had to use the money they made babysitting or something like that, they’d mow lawns or clean gutters for people, none of them had money handed to them for anything,” she said.

One word of advice Frazier would like to share on change is how to accept it. “I just learned to accept change, you can’t change it so you might as well accept it,” she said.

Frazier loves to travel and cruise, she has been to Europe multiple times, Los Angeles, Alaska and more.

“All of my kids went on my 80th birthday cruise with me,” she said.

Frazier was diagnosed with breast cancer before a trip with her daughters a couple years ago. She told her doctor he had to wait until she got back for treatment. Frazier has overcome it and never let it slow her down.

One time her daughter, DeAnn Sullivan, asked her mother what she thinks keeps her going and she answered, “I’m still useful to people.”

Frazier helps at her church, visits residents in nursing homes and is still contributing to the world.

“When I visit her sometimes, I’ll ask to help her and she tells me, ‘No. If I can do it, I need to do it myself,’ ” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said the idea that when something happens that’s not good, she (Frazier) deals with it and lets it go, she doesn’t dwell on it, she doesn’t wallow in it and she moves on and it’s usually to help someone else.

“Janice is the reason my mom is 100 and alive, she won’t say that but I will,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan went on to say how Janice and their mom are best friends and how she checks on her everyday and they go everywhere together.

“She helps her live independently,” Sullivan said.

According to Frazier’s daughters, she is still a member of the altar society and never misses Mass.

“She reads a lot, she knows how to use her DVR and she recently got her first iPhone at 99 years old,” said Janice Brown, Frazier’s youngest daughter.

One of her favorite things about her phone is FaceTiming her children and grandchildren. “Our family is really like the real life “Yours, Mine and Ours,” Frazier said.

For the past couple of weeks Frazier has been baking cookies for her family coming in from all over for her big birthday celebration.

Frazier’s family planned it to where each individual family, on their own, would have quality time with her while in Louisiana, along with the big celebrations together.

“I’ve enjoyed my life, I just try to stay active and do things for other people,” Frazier said smiling.