Amy Hill Hearth, Author

By Amy Hill Hearth
Copyright 1994

"It's as if we've become America's grandmas," Sadie Delany said with a huge smile as we looked through a new basketful of fan mail. At 105 years old, Sadie Delany, along with her "little" sister Bessie, 103, had become everyone's favorite centenarians.
People often ask me if the sisters changed (or were spoiled) from all of the attention. The answer, quite simple, is not one bit! What can you say about two celebrities who still insist on making their own soap and whose main preoccupation is getting into Heaven?
When the letters came pouring in from readers, they often came with questions. People wanted advice, direction, and encouragement. The way they were raised, the sisters believed they had to answer each and every letter. But what to do? If they lived thirty more years, they would not be able to answer them all.
One day it occurred to us that in lieu of answering the fan mail, we could do another book. Only this time we would not tell the story of the sisters' lives, but the secrets of old age.
Fortunately, I had kept a journal during the past few years, where I had jotted down the words of advice, parables, and amusing anecdotes that the sisters had passed on to me. I used my journal as a framework, expanding on the entries. Additionally, during the spring and summer of 1994, I prompted the sisters for new thoughts and ideas and wrote them down. As in "Having Our Say." the sequence of material in the final manuscript is mine, but the words are all theirs.