Photos by Ron Rittenhouse Sara Little, center, with daughter Emma Finch and granddaughter DeAndra Burton at her early 101st birthday party Thursday at the Madison Center Genesis HealthCare.

MORGANTOWN — Sara Boyd Little will never forget what it was like seeing President Franklin Roosevelt in his wheelchair and shaking his hand at the White House.

And when that one movie came out a few years back, she started thinking about Katherine Johnson, remembering how the numbers prodigy made chalk dust swirl, with columns of numbers on her blackboard at the Monongalia High School.

Turns out, the once-unheralded “Hidden Figures” numbers star at NASA was her math teacher for a time.

During her stint as a secretary at the Pentagon during World II, Little would often look up from her 70-words-per-minute typing to regard Gen. Douglas MacArthur or Admiral Chester Nimitz bustling by, summoned back to Washington for an audience with the president.

Little marked her 101st birthday Easter Sunday. People came out to Madison Center-Genesis HealthCare on Thursday to help her celebrate early.

“I’ve been blessed,” she said. “And I’m not going anywhere, so you’d better eat some cake.”

In the ways of lots of once- and former ex-pats from West Virginia, Sara decided she was going to return home to West Virginia after living in Philadelphia for several years. 

Philadelphia was where she made her home after her marriage to James Little during the war. They started having kids — and West Virginia started looking pretty good, she said. 

And Osage always looked good to her, she said.

In what at the time was a “Whites Only/Coloreds Only” world, Osage was an oasis of inclusiveness.

Call it a miner’s Melting Pot.

Its company houses were home for Blacks up from Alabama, whites from across Appalachia and Italians who sailed from Calabria. The Russians, Hungarians and Poles were on the next hill over. A good 19 nations in all, represented.

Fluent English, broken English, dialects – and Sunday dishes – of every stripe.

“We played with the little white kids and everybody got along just fine,” she said. “There weren’t any racial issues in Osage. We loved everybody.”

On this day at Madison Center, everybody loved her.

Cars in the lot at the facility of Baker’s Ridge Road belonged to family, friends and Monongalia County Sheriff Todd Forbes.

“Sara is the sweetest lady you’re ever gonna know,” granddaughter DeAndra Burton said.

“Everybody ‘adopts’ her,” she said. “She’s everybody’s granny.”