Kennedy: Chattanooga's first baby of 1917 set to turn 100

Blanche Pilcher
Blanche Pilcher
photo This was taken a couple of weeks ago. This is Blanche Pilcher in front of the home she was born in 100 years ago.

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Blanche Pilcher was the first baby born in Chattanooga on New Year's Day 1917, clocking in at 90 seconds past midnight.

As a result of her timely birth at her grandmother's home on 13th Avenue, little Blanche's family was showered with gifts from area merchants. Among them were a $5 savings account from First National Bank and a flashlight from Southern Auto Supply.

Had her $5 savings account merely kept up with inflation, it would be worth nearly $100 now. Meanwhile, we are left wondering why a newborn would need a flashlight.

The birth was marked with a full-page tribute to "Baby [Blanche] Gregory" in the Chattanooga News. The "first baby" sweepstakes also included two thermos bottles, a pink bow, a high chair, a photography sitting, a $2 baby spoon and a silver cup. In the starched prose of the day, the newspaper noted that the "time of the tiny maid's advent was 12:01 and one-half."

This Sunday, "Baby Blanche" Gregory Pilcher will celebrate her 100th birthday at the Greenbriar Cove retirement community at the foot of White Oak Mountain in Collegedale. There will be three kinds of birthday cake and fancy, personalized napkins. About 250 people have been invited to the reception, and friends and family members from California to North Carolina are traveling here for the occasion.

"I'm really happy that I've made it this long," Pilcher said in an interview earlier this week. "I'm just blessed that the Lord has let me keep my memory."

And what a stretch of years to remember. Pilcher was born at the dawn of World War I, sharing a birth year with such deceased luminaries as President John F. Kennedy and actor Dean Martin.

Her childhood was marked by tragedy, as her mother, Rowena Gregory, died of a heart abnormality when Blanche was just 11 years old.

Pilcher has memories of her father, a Chattanooga barber named William Gregory, taking her and her three older siblings to his shop on

11th Street on Saturdays. The establishment was a few doors up from the Davenport Hosiery Mills building (now the site of the Chattanooga Times Free Press).

"My father said he couldn't leave us alone at home," she recalls.

Pilcher has survived two husbands: James McClure, an engineer at Combustion Engineering, and James M. Pilcher, a Floridian whom she married after McClure's death. She gave birth to two children, Frank and Joella, and worked for a time at the S&H Green Stamps store on Brainerd Road.

After Pilcher's death at age 95, Blanche moved back to Chattanooga, where she has lived at Garden Plaza of Greenbriar Cove for seven years. At age 93, she broke a hip while shopping. The break healed and she now uses a walker, which she calls her Cadillac.

Her birthday is being greeted with fanfare by the Garden Plaza at Greenbriar Cove staff. Blanche is evidently quite popular among the residents, where she is famous for handing out cross-stitched renderings of the Lord's Prayer.

"He's the first person I want to see when I leave here," she said. "He has done so much for me."

Gratitude for a life well-lived is one of Blanche Pilcher's hallmarks.

Meanwhile, not many people can say they've had their birthdays celebrated in the newspaper twice, 100 years apart. But the "tiny maid" of 1917 is a reminder to us all that life can exceed our expectations, especially when it is part of a divine plan.

Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.

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