WASHINGTON (AP) – At 106 years old, she’s seen more than a dozen presidents come and go, but Virginia McLaurin says she can finally die happy after meeting President Barack Obama.
Video of the centenarian shaking her groove with excitement quickly went viral on the Internet after last week’s Black History Month reception at the White House. The grandmother told The Associated Press that when she saw the president and first lady Michelle Obama in the flesh, “I was so happy, I started dancing.”
“I’ve come a long ways, a long ways,” McLaurin said in an interview outside her Washington home. “I just didn’t think I’d ever live to go this far in the world.”
For McLaurin, who said she was born in South Carolina in 1909, the White House invitation was a long time in the making. It’s been more than a year since she started a White House petition asking to meet the president – and offering to come to his house to make it easier.
“I didn’t think I’d ever live to see a colored president,” McLaurin, who is black, said in a YouTube video accompanying the petition.