But Viola Walker never dreamed she'd live to see an Election Day like today.
She never imagined that on her 103rd birthday she'd have a choice between a woman and a black man.
"No, no, never," she told me yesterday. "I never imagined I'd see something like this. This is what we prayed for all those years.
"But I never thought I'd live this long. I never thought I'd live to my 80s, even."
She has lived long enough to see people whose descendants fought and died for the right to vote sit home on Election Days.
"It's surprising to me to know that so many people don't vote," she said. "It's your privilege. How can you ever speak up for yourself if you don't even vote?"
She had no trouble speaking up for herself yesterday when I visited her in a retirement apartment complex where she lives at 55th Street and Haverford Avenue. She is as slim as a reed and has the complexion of a woman about half her age.
She eats whatever she wants and maintains her small apartment with minimal help from her son Terrence and a visiting nurse who comes in a few days a week.
Except for a broken hand two months ago and a cut in her scalp suffered 35 years ago when a venetian blind she was dusting fell on her head, she has never spent a day in a hospital.
"She stopped driving when she was 86," her son told me. "I asked her why and she said she was tired of having to drive all these old people around."
Despite her good health, though, she didn't take any chances that she'd be too sick to vote today.
She voted for Barack Obama by absentee ballot. But he was probably the only candidate who could have kept her from voting for Hillary Clinton.
"I came up right in the midst of women voting for the first time," she said. "I was proud of that. I thought God had heard and answered our prayers.
"Of course women have a big voice in politics now. It doesn't matter whether you're a woman or what color you are today.
"Women today can take jobs that men can't even apply for."
