Tuscaloosa woman celebrates her 100th birthday

For Carrie Mae Bell, Tuscaloosa’s newest centenarian and a member of Calvary Baptist Church on 12th Avenue since 1925, a life that doesn’t include service to others is a life unlived.

Speaking to a crowded sanctuary Sunday morning, Bell exhorted the youth of the church to always make a habit of service, no matter where their academic or later professional careers take them.

“When you do things and help in the church or any where you go ... it will work out for the good,” Bell said. “You just try it and see.”

Bell, who has spent a lifetime serving others in the Tuscaloosa area, celebrated her 100th birthday Sunday at Calvary in the company of familiy and friends. The day marked the first time in two years she was able to attend Sunday service.

“I’m happy to be at church,” Bell said. “I hadn’t ever missed a Sunday in church until recently.”

Born in 1908 to Henry and Pauline Bell, Carrie Mae Bell spent the first 17 years of her life on the family farm in Henagar in DeKalb County, where her father was the local school teacher and minister. Bell’s mother operated the community telephone system out of the family home.

The eldest of three daughters — she had one older brother, Clakey — Bell was introduced to responsibility at an early age. She helped her mother connect lines and hand crank the rings on the massive telephone switch board that served DeKalb County. Bell was soon running the board herself — at least for short periods of time.

“I had to attend to it while mother did the washing, Bell said. “I’d know who was on every line.”

Henry and Pauline Bell moved the family to Tuscaloosa in 1925 so their children could attend the University of Alabama, all of whom did. After graduating in 1942, Bell spent 10 years as a receptionist and nurse for local doctor G.B. Conwill before becoming supervisor of blood donor services for the Druid City Hosptial blood bank in 1952.

Bell said she spent her days making sure the hospital received plenty of “good blood,” a task that, in the days before national blood drives and rapid transportation, required her to work long and often odd hours.

Emergencies frequently bade Bell to call on reliable donors, mostly men, in the dead of night. She said her task was often complicated by suspicous wives who could not understand why an attractive single woman needed to see their husbands so desperately.

Friends and family said Bell usually set a nervous spouse at ease by saying, “I don’t want you’re husband, I want his blood!” Donors soon began to playfully refer to Bell as the hospitals head “leech” or “vampire.”

Bell traveled extensively after retiring from the hospital in 1975, touring much of North America and Israel. She never lost her taste for helping others, however, and until her confinement to a wheelchair a few years ago, was a regular volunteer at Tuscaloosa Religious Services and Focus on Senior Citizens.

Bell now spends her days entertaining guests at her home at 207 Hargrove Road, the same home her family moved into upon arriving in Tuscaloosa nearly 80 years ago, where she is cared for by friends and family.

Reach Matt Hawk at matt.hawk@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0213.