LAUREL HILL — From Bogalusa, La., to Laurel Hill is about 250 miles. But Edna Gella, the Hill’s newest nonagenarian, arrived here by way of Buffalo, N.Y., Jacksonville and Fruitland Park.
Gella — born March 19, 1925 in Pine, La. — grew up in Bogalusa, a sawmill and paper-making town on the Pearl River.
Graduating from Bogalusa High School, she soon moved across the river to seek work in Mississippi. When she landed a clerical job in Jackson, her mother joined her.
Gella recalls once wanting to take the train to New Orleans for a weekend with a girlfriend, but her mother flatly refused.
“Young ladies just didn’t go to New Orleans by themselves back then,” she said. “Especially good country girls. My mother would have no part of it.”
But she got to Biloxi, Miss., during World War II, and fell in love with Raymond Mitchell, a young gunner on a B-25. When he was transferred to Buffalo, N.Y., she followed and they wed in 1942.
Settling in Jacksonville at war’s end, the couple had Raymond Jr., Dennis and Linda.
A few years after Raymond Sr. died in 1984, Miss Edna — as she’s known by friends at Laurel Hill Presbyterian Church — met and married John Gella and moved to Fruitland Park near Orlando.
“She always liked to work out in the yard,” Dennis Mitchell said. “John was a contractor so they built a couple houses and she did the yard work.”
When John Gella died about 10 years ago, she moved to Laurel Hill to be near her son and his family, living down the lane from them in a home Mitchell built for his mom.
Though she takes life slower than she once did, “When she goes outside, she’ll be pulling weeds up,” Mitchell said.
Gella participates at church functions, recently hosting the February congregational supper, and is a regular at Crestview Area Chamber of Commerce breakfast meetings and events. “She loves going to them,” Mitchell said. “She likes all the activity and people.”
Saturday, friends and family joined Gella for a quiet celebration of her first nine decades.
“I can’t believe I’m this old,” she said during a recent Sunday service. “I don’t feel like it.”
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: ‘Miss Edna’ recalls life from Bogalusa, La., to Laurel Hill