MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Memphis woman is celebrating her 100th birthday, and her family gave her the birthday bash of a lifetime at Graceland.
Mrs. Donnie Tate, also known as "Mother Tate," officially turns 100 on Sept. 23., but her family wasted no time celebrating.
“100 is a long way to go, so I just be thankful loving you all,” Tate said. “Everything has been coming along really good.”
Mother Tate was born in Alabama but has made Memphis her home for more than 15 years.
“Just to see my mother live this long is such a blessing," Mother Tate's daughter, Mary Tate Lee, said. "So many of my friends lost their parents at a very young age.”
Mother Tate recognized that too.
“Just—you don’t see it much," Donnie Tate said. "You don’t see that very much."
Therefore, Mary Tate Lee makes the most of it.
“I spoil her rotten," she said. "I make sure that she’s done so many things. She’s been to Disney World I think on her 85th birthday. We’ve did things on her 90th. So, every five years, we’ve done a lot with her."
Mother Tate knows it as well.
“Everything thing you want, they try to do,” Donnie Tate said. “I think it’s just wonderful. I think they love me, honey.”
That they do.
“Just being with her, watching her and nurturing me—she’s not only my mother. She’s my best friend. She’s a sister I never had,” Lee said. “My mother has always worked with us and taught me how to love, how to treat everyone like you want to be treated.”
That, and one other key tidbit, is what Mother Tate calls the key to living long.
“Don’t eat everything you want,” Tate said.
Mother Tate's humor and laughter spreads joy to her family in attendance. That attendance made Lee's heart "just melt."
"I was so emotional just all the family and friends that came from out of town, people in town,” she said.
Donnie Tate said the whole event was "really exciting."
“I really said then, ‘I know somebody cares,’” Tate said. “It means so much just to look and see all of them. I can see the love in them. I love them too.”