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One hundred years and one day ago, Cornelia Whitten came to St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Peachtree Street for baptism.
Sunday, she was back for a renewal of baptismal vows.
"I thought I would never be old," the 101-year-old said, and added with a shrug and smile, "but you never know."
Whitten is an anomaly in Atlanta, where it seems buildings rarely outlast the generation that erected them and affiliations change with each new move or job.
She has known Peachtree Street since horses made their way up and down it, and she was the first baby baptized in the 142-year old congregation's current location.
The brick church, which had moved from a Pryor Street location, was under construction in 1906 when Whitten was a baby. The sanctuary was not finished, so Whitten's service was held in the undercroft, a level beneath the main building.
A few years later, Whitten was a toddler and under the Sunday school tutelage of Cornelia Dibble, her namesake.
And Whitten's brothers Tupper and Wilmer were well-taught by the parish priests, the Rev. Tillius Tupper and the Rev. Cary Wilmer.
"Was anyone else named after their priests or Sunday school teachers?" the Rev. Gene Paradise asked a roomful of well-wishers at a reception for Whitten.
Not a hand went up, though the corners of attendees' mouths rose in smiles. When asked what lessons she wanted to share, Whitten gave a little advice that made it clear Ms. Dibble's Sunday school lessons survived the last century and made it into this one. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And praise the Lord and thank him for what you have," she said.
Whitten lives with her daughter Doris Messer in Conyers. Whitten attends church there and comes back to St. Luke's for special occasions but has maintained her membership with the church since birth.
"My heart has always been at Saint Luke's," she said.
She recalled that every Sunday, her family would make the trip from their home on Ponce de Leon Place to the church.
"It was a long ways," Whitten said. "And we could take the street car for five cents. We would always have two nickels in our pockets when we went."
Or, if the weather was nice, they would walk, and the children were allowed to do something else with their nickels.
"We would put one in the collection for missions, and we would have the other to spend on our way home," she said.
A nickel could buy an ice cream cone on Peachtree Street when she was a girl.
That has changed, but that is not all, Whitten remarked.
She voices a phrase that could be an alternative to Atlanta's unofficial moniker "the city too busy to hate."
"Whenever I come back and look, Atlanta is not the same."
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
