Woman celebrates 100th birthday with sisters who were 102 and 104 — shares secret of longevity

The youngest of three sisters from Kansas has just turned 100, and she is celebrating the phenomenal milestone with her older siblings. Frances Kompus turned 100 on November 11, 2021, and helping celebrate were her sisters Julia Kopriva, who turned 104 earlier in November, and Lucy Pochop, who had her 102nd birthday in June, according to USA Today. 

Kompus celebrated her birthday at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in her northwest Kansas town of Atwood, where she was joined by about 50 people. The place is filled with memories for the siblings as it is the same church where they were baptized and confirmed, and where each was married over the years. "I loved it," Kompus said in an interview recently. "It was a good party."

While some people call this a rare coincidence, the three sisters call it an absolute blessing, per KSN. “I guess. I have been around a while,” laughed Lucy Pochop.“We are getting up there,” added Frances Kompus. “I am thankful for us girls being together all the time, my parents and my faith,” said Julia Kopriva.

The youngest sister always had company while growing up on a farm in Beardsley, Kansas. She recalled having to "run to keep up with her sisters" on the 2-mile walk to school. "I always did what they did," Kompus said. "Sometimes that was working and sometimes that was fun."

Since it was just the three girls in the family, they also had to help out their father in the field. “What I remember well is my father didn’t have modern tractors. We took gas, gasoline out in the field in 5-gallon buckets,” Kopriva explained. “We’d cross the pasture, we would walk, and then on the way back, we would stop at the creek and catch frogs, put them in our pockets,” Kompus said.

They also took a trip down memory lane to simpler times when there was no internet. “We always had homemade bread, just plain potatoes, and gravy and meat. With those cookstoves, that was hard to bake, the temperature was hard to keep. Even if it didn’t come out good, we still ate it,” laughed Kopriva.

But it was not always that easy. The sisters vividly remember the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. “It was dark sometimes. The teachers would call the parents, and you know come and get us from school. Then, we had old homes, and at the bottom, my mother would always put wet towels so the dirt wouldn’t be so bad to come in,” said Kopriva. “The younger generation don’t believe what we done went through. We work today, but we worked harder those days.”

“Things are a lot better now than they were when we were little,” Pochop said. As for their long lives, Kompus credits eating well as the reason behind it. She also added it was important to be social, walk a lot, and simply "Keep going."

“I think faith comes first and thank your parents, grandparents,” Kopriva added. “We eat well, right?” Kopriva laughed. “And pray and try to stay out of mischief.”