In January alone, I received three emails telling me of people turning 100. One man is actually turning 102. And last year someone in Sunnyvale reached 104. So OK I guess that means we are living longer. All of which means I may have to relegate centurions to short notices—like wedding and engagement announcements.

But for a writer like me, this is heartbreaking because there are all those wonderful personal details about history that one can find in a long life.

My grandmother on my mother's side never made it to 100, but she got close at 93.

When she was in her 80s, I sent her a tape recorder and five blank audio tapes, asking her to simply talk about her life. She filled all five tapes with wonderful details about harsh country living conditions in Oklahoma and Arkansas in the early part of the 1900s.

She tells of hauling a huge pot down to the river to do the laundry.

And she tells how her family—of 13 children—rode a wagon into town to see the first talkie movie ever made. And while my grandmother's mother drove the wagon, her bother kept a hammer in hand so he could pound at the wooden wheel that kept inching off the axle.

But individual lives tell different histories. Not so long ago, I wrote about a woman who'd come from Ireland during the 1920s at the age of 18 and had taken up the position as house manager for a wealthy Saratoga family. The family's home was actually built by the famous architect, Julia Morgan. The Irish woman even met Robert Frost, the poet, for whom she sewed a rip in the pants of his tuxedo. From this woman I got a glimpse into what it was like to live in a wealthy household in the 1920s. At that time, those with money and who were kind took it upon themselves to completely support their staff, even during the depression. There was no social security or medical insurance. At times they even took in their servants' relatives. This woman also remembered the Ireland of her childhood, when wealth was measured by the size of the land and the number of cows. She remembered living through some of the Irish civil war and her father being dragged off for questioning. She remembered her trip over to the United States on the cruise ship the SS America and being searched for lice.

A little over a year ago we wrote a cover story about one centurion who was the first child born to Korean parents in this country. Throughout much of his life he directly faced the bigotry of the United States. He was refused a room in a Seattle boarding house because they didn't take "Orientals." He saw men he trained as seamen get promoted in the Navy when he was not even allowed in the Naval Academy because he was "Oriental." But he saw the changes, too. His wife wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt about her husband never being promoted in the Navy and the first lady saw to it that the Navy create a new position for him. After the war he was unable to rent a home in San Francisco for his family, but in Palo Alto he was able to buy a home. He went from not being allowed to work for the state right after WWII to being a head manufacturing engineer for a company until he retired at age 65.

I've written about nuns, a dying breed of women whose stories include building hospitals, schools, orphanages and universities out of virtually nothing but sheer determination. I've interviewed Holocaust survivors, who tell in a very personal way, how they faced the horrors of the pogroms and labor camps.

One woman told me how as a young girl she escaped from Russia in a casket. And I interviewed another woman whose father was in the French underground during WWII. But the survivors also carry in their memories what it was like for Jews before the war, when they were the artists, doctors and lawyers, the elite in Germany. And there are those centurions who lived through the Japanese relocation camps and the depression.

My stepmother has her own history. She was once a milliner who owned a business in Hollywood, on fashionable Wilshire Boulevard during Hollywood's heyday. She made hats for the stars—long-ago stars like Norma Talmadge and a young Betty Davis, and she got to know them intimately.

Some would argue though that her best story is the one about becoming an alcoholic and recovering some 50-plus years ago when it wasn't fashionable. It's quite a story and one she still tells at the support group she continues to attend even at 101.

Some stories are filled, not so much with historical details, as with the human spirit. One wonders how people can survive things like the Holocaust, catastrophic illness, loss of children, wars. Well one way to find out how is to talk to those who've survived a hundred years.

I'm not sure how we'll handle our centurions now that there are so many of them. But we'll for sure give them a salute and tip our hats for all the history they've lived through and hopefully tell a story or two now and then.

Sandy Sims is the editor of The Sun. Contact her at 408.200.1055 or via email, ssims@svcn.com.