VALDOSTA — When Henderson Lincoln was in kindergarten and attended his first 100th Day of School Celebration at Crossroads Baptist School in Valdosta, he told his parents he wanted his great-grandmother to come to the celebration when he was in fourth grade and she was 100.

Well, this is the year it happened.

Ann Barber Rolt, 100, of Thomasville visited the classes of her great-grandson, Henderson, and his 7 year-old brother, David, for the 100th Day of School Celebration this month. They are sons of Rolt’s grandson, Stephen, and his wife, Mary Scott Lincoln.

What a stir Ann Rolt created. One of the children remarked that he’d never seen anyone 100 before.

Rolt not only visited the fourth-grade class of Abby Gann and Tammy Bailey as well as the second-grade class of Kellie Kitchens and Patricia Hendley, but she also talked to the students about her life growing up in the first part of the 1900s on her family’s farm near Bainbridge.

The children were fascinated to learn that her family only bought flour, sugar and coffee since they grew all the other food they needed on the farm — including cows, pigs and chickens and their own corn for grinding into grits.

They were also surprised to learn that there was no electricity, only kerosene lamps for light and fireplaces for heat — and there were no refrigerators, only a pie safe to keep food. But, what was even harder for the children to grasp was that Ann Rolt said she did not have toys.

Instead she and her brothers and sisters made up their own games to play.

Question and answer time came next and the questions ranged from “Were dinosaurs still alive when you were little?” (“No,” with a chuckle) to “What did Santa bring you in your stocking?” (“Apples, oranges and nuts”).

Then finally a fourth grader asked the most important question of all, “What is the secret to your long life?” Ann Rolt answered in her soft, charming Southern voice as her daughter, Kathy Rolt Lincoln, stood nearby, “Faith in God, closeness of family and friends, staying active and working until I was 80 years old.”