EMU alumna Pat Crouch to celebrate 100th birthday

If Mary Clark has heard it once, she's heard it a thousand times.

"I want to be just like your mom when I grow up."

Clark's mother, Eastern Michigan University alumna and former Roosevelt School teacher Florence "Pat" Crouch, turns 100 Feb. 6. Optimistic and easygoing, Crouch is a role model for younger generations which, at her age, is just about everyone.

TURN OF HER CENTURY: Pat Crouch, an EMU alumna, relaxes in her apartment at Independence Village in Brighton. Crouch turns 100 Feb. 6. Photo by Amy E. Whitesall

"I don't think she acts 100," said Clark, who's organized a Feb. 7 open house in Crouch's honor at Independence Village in Brighton. "Or, at least I know people who are a lot younger than her who act a lot older."

Crouch said her 100th birthday is just another day as far as she's concerned. Her own mother lived to 104. Aside from an active nature and a lifelong interest in fitness, she insists she hasn't done anything special to get there.

"Lots of people live to 100 nowadays," she said.

But to appreciate the swath of history Crouch's life spans, consider this:

She was four years old when Henry Ford invented the assembly line and 11 when women were granted the right to vote in the United States. She retired three years before Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon.

Born the year the NAACP was founded, her 100th birthday follows the inauguration of America's first African American president.

"I've lived through about 20 presidents and I just marvel at the way things have progressed," she said.

Crouch grew up in Ypsilanti, in a house on Lowell Street that's since been overtaken by an EMU parking lot. A grade school friend dubbed her "Pat" and it stuck, probably in no small part because she prefers it to "Florence."

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