Singing Centenarian Still Going Strong

How many 100-year-olds are walking around their birthday party greeting guests, dressed to the nines in their two-inch, hot pink snakeskin heels? How many 100-year-olds do any of us even know?

“Have you gotten some food?” she asks a guest. “Have you found a seat?” she asks another. She hugs the guests, calls them by name.

Meet Didi Foster, now eligible for the term “centenarian.”

Didi (everyone calls her Didi) celebrated her 100^th birthday last week at her church, Fellowship of Believers, attended by dozens of her friends.

“She wanted to invite the whole world, but I had to limit her,” said Pamela Fulton, the long-time friend who arranged the evening.  “Didi is a blessing, and she blesses so many people. She is very compassionate, always wanting to help people. When her neighbor gets sick, she is over there cooking. She is always concerned about other people.”

We met Didi in the late 1970s when we and many of our friends attended Church of the Cross, a charismatic, non-denominational church on 26^th Street West. She had a full head of snow white hair (still does), and she literally belted out her worship songs (still does). She looks exactly the same (we don’t).

Didi’s singing style, no microphone, was honed as a 5-year-old performing on a truck flatbed at rallies raising money to rescue orphans from persecution in Armenia. She later sang at events selling war bonds for World War I.

Her own family escaped Armenia and settled in Philadelphia.

“My family saw what was happening, and my Daddy came over first. He worked and sent money home, and the rest of my family came in 1910. I was born a year later,” Didi said. “They took the Christians on death marches just like they did the Jewish people.”

Some of her favorites from that era were “Smile A While” and “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.”

Eventually, she became a professional singer until she married Arnold Foster, also a musician.

“He was a success in show business; I earned a living at it but I wasn’t a success. He played the Palace Theater in New York, which is the same as heaven for a Christian,” she said. “I was never a star, I never attained the fame he did.”

During her recent birthday party a trio of former Church of the Cross members, Dawn McClendon, Nancy Kenney and Martha Di Palma, accompanied by pianist Sam Lane, performed a medley of those songs to the delight of the audience.

Asked for her secret to longevity, Didi answered matter-of-factly, “I would have to say genes that I have probably inherited from my grandparents, because both my parents died in their 60s. I am the only survivor of our family.”

Then she excused herself from the phone interview because she needed to turn her chicken she was broiling in her own kitchen in her own little home. She lives independently and enjoys going out to eat () with friends.

“She is sharp as a tack,” Pamela said. “She likes going out. Up until a year ago, she went with the church group and sang in the nursing homes.

“She would tell people, ‘I have to go to the nursing home and sing for the old people.’ "