By Caylie Moore, Features Editor
Mable Christine “Tillie” Yunker Griffin was born on Oct. 24, 1926 in a small Nashville, Tennessee house — and she has faced all kinds of one-of-a-kind ventures since then.
The Gadsden resident officially celebrated her 100th birthday two weeks ago on Oct. 24, 2026, surrounded by her living family, family friends, and fellow church members. But technically, as her son Sam Griffin would explain to Features Editor Caylie Moore in a phone interview, the celebration went on for two days.
“It’s a very unique situation with her birthday,” Sam stated. “We also recognize her birthday on Oct. 23 because of some recordkeeping issues back in 1926.”
He went on to detail just what those issues were: Since Tillie was born at home and not in a hospital, where birth certificate records would have been kept more accurately, her birth report was written up incorrectly. As such, the state recognizes her birthday as Oct. 23, and so, legally speaking, Tillie is a day older than she actually is — a peculiar but fascinating and fun fact about her life.
It is, however, only one special detail which makes up the long life of this special woman; Sam pointed out that his mother had a treasure trove full of stories to share with the world, and he was more than happy to do just that.
For example, in 1943, at the age of just 16, Tillie’s boyfriend — William M. Griffin — came home on leave from the U.S. Army for a few days, and with the permission of her parents, the young couple set off to Kentucky to elope, whose marriage laws were more lenient than Tennessee’s. They married on June 1 of that year, when marriage licenses were just $2.
But before they could even have their honeymoon, William had to return to his station — and so, their wedding bliss was cut short.
“[William] had to go back to California, where he was stationed in Mojave Desert. Around October of that year, he was going to get a two-week furlough. In their letters, they had made arrangements for [Tillie] to come to Los Angeles, California, so that they could stay together and have their honeymoon — something that they didn’t get to have when he was home on leave in June.”
By herself, the then 16-turning-17-year-old set off on the long journey from her home in Nashville to Chicago, and from Chicago to her final destination in Los Angeles. The journey, however, was not without its bumps, as Sam would soon explain.
“When [Tillie] got to Chicago to change to her train heading west, there were just stations after stations after stations. It wasn’t really lit up the way it is today, and there were chalkboards with different departure times, with different trains leaving at different times. You couldn’t go online to check whether this or that train was on time — the information wasn’t there.”
“[Tillie] got turned around in Chicago, but a porter — she called him the ‘the nicest Black man she could ever meet’ and said he had to be an angel — came by. When he walked up to her, he said, ‘Young lady, you look like you need some help,’ and she did,” Sam stated.
When Tillie showed the man her train tickets, he grew concerned — because they were on the completely wrong side of the station. Grabbing her bag for her, the man helped her across the tracks themselves so that they could get to the other side of the station in time.
“This man knew where he was going — and by the grace of God, they were placed there together,” Sam stated. “She only just made the connection.”
Thanking the man with a dime from her change purse — something he was “tickled to death” about — she took her place on the train, which was crowded wall to wall with servicemen that day.
Tillie would go on to spend her honeymoon with her husband, and she returned to Nashville soon after; she made that return trip by herself as well.
It was far from the only intimidating journey Tillie took — Sam explained that in 1956, William had an opportunity to move up in his company and relocated his family from Nashville to Gadsden; and in 1987, she flew to North Carolina to help her youngest daughter with her newly born triplets — but she always went through with it for the sake of her family.
“She has always been a family-oriented person — always willing to help with the grandkids, always keeping an “open door” policy when the parents needed a little relief from raising their kids,” Sam reminisced.
Tillie’s sense of family extends well past her own bloodline, though, even in her centenarian years.
“She’s always loved her church — formerly Bellevue United Methodist Church, now Falls Mountain Church — and she’s still in contact with a lot of the members who are still kicking,” Sam stated. “The church has always been supportive of us, and she’s always been supportive of them.”
Hardworking, caring, supportive — the 100-year-old woman that is Tillie Griffin is truly a ray of much needed light in the otherwise dark and busy world, Moore thinks. And better yet? Perhaps those who listen to her stories can learn to become rays of light themselves — and spread some of that light to other people, too.
