Good Neighbor - Lu Fly
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written by Elizabeth Bartasius
photography by Ann Madden Lu Fly loves to talk. “When you’re 96 years old and have a captive audience, you’re in hog heaven.” It helps that Lu Fly has a lot of interesting stories to tell. Heck, she’s talked her way through some of the most important events in modern history, like the Great Depression where women weren’t wanted in the workforce taking jobs away from the men. Still, Lu worked as a stenographer and paid her way through college. In 1936, she graduated at the top of her class with a degree in Chemistry. She couldn’t find any jobs in Mississippi, though. Because a friend was working in |
Washington D.C. and she wanted out of the South, Lu applied to the FBI. They invited her to pass a test for employment. She did and the first Sunday on the job she found herself assigned to the sabotage department, taking her turn at the new and innovative switchboard.
“I’d never worked a telephone,” she says. “They told me there’s nothing going on a Sunday.” Of course, that Sunday happened to be December 7, 1941.
Lu remembers it all. “I got one call and suddenly the door flew open. Agents streamed in screaming bloody murder, ‘They bombed Pearl Harbor’.”
Lu talked non-stop until two o’clock in the morning on that Sunday. “Those telephone operators cursed me cause I couldn’t write (the messages) fast enough. That was my introduction to the Bureau of Investigation.”
Lu kept on talking while she and Henry raised two boys and two girls during another major shift in history: the Civil Rights Movement. They lived in Jackson, Mississippi in a time when being white was everything. Except if you’re a white writer, like Henry, sending black sympathy letters to the newspaper.
Henry was a pacifist and believed in equal rights. “Henry wouldn’t kill a cockroach. He wasn’t very popular. We had to leave town. Those were scary days.”
That’s how they landed on the Gulf Coast. “The coast was more open.”
The young couple raised their family with the motto: Be kind to everybody, even animals.
One thing is clear she doesn’t just love to talk, she loves life.
Lu and her husband Henry Fly had 66 years of marriage before he passed away. So how does one have a long marriage? “I have no idea,” Lu says with the shake of her head.
One thing she does know: “Be Happy. You’ll add years to your life.”
Lu would know.
“I didn’t think I’d like to be 96. I’m old! I can’t see. I can’t hear,” she stops to think for a moment. “But I can talk. Heaven help you.”
editor's note: This interview was conducted when Lu was 96. She's now 97 with her next birthday coming up, August 28th!
“I’d never worked a telephone,” she says. “They told me there’s nothing going on a Sunday.” Of course, that Sunday happened to be December 7, 1941.
Lu remembers it all. “I got one call and suddenly the door flew open. Agents streamed in screaming bloody murder, ‘They bombed Pearl Harbor’.”
Lu talked non-stop until two o’clock in the morning on that Sunday. “Those telephone operators cursed me cause I couldn’t write (the messages) fast enough. That was my introduction to the Bureau of Investigation.”
Lu kept on talking while she and Henry raised two boys and two girls during another major shift in history: the Civil Rights Movement. They lived in Jackson, Mississippi in a time when being white was everything. Except if you’re a white writer, like Henry, sending black sympathy letters to the newspaper.
Henry was a pacifist and believed in equal rights. “Henry wouldn’t kill a cockroach. He wasn’t very popular. We had to leave town. Those were scary days.”
That’s how they landed on the Gulf Coast. “The coast was more open.”
The young couple raised their family with the motto: Be kind to everybody, even animals.
One thing is clear she doesn’t just love to talk, she loves life.
Lu and her husband Henry Fly had 66 years of marriage before he passed away. So how does one have a long marriage? “I have no idea,” Lu says with the shake of her head.
One thing she does know: “Be Happy. You’ll add years to your life.”
Lu would know.
“I didn’t think I’d like to be 96. I’m old! I can’t see. I can’t hear,” she stops to think for a moment. “But I can talk. Heaven help you.”
editor's note: This interview was conducted when Lu was 96. She's now 97 with her next birthday coming up, August 28th!
