Beatrice Gallman, better known as "Ms. Bea" to her fellow employees at Aiken Surgical Associates, normally shows up for work on Thursdays to continue in her 40-year tradition of helping with cleaning tasks around the office.
However, she was asked to come in one day early this week, and she found herself being honored on the occasion of her 103rd birthday.
The lifelong Aiken County resident, who grew up in the Talatha community south of Aiken, was born one week before the sinking of the RMS Titanic, when William Howard Taft was president and South Carolina's leaders included Gov. Coleman Livingston Blease and Sens. Benjamin Tillman and Ellison D. Smith.
New Mexico and Arizona had become the 47th and 48th states, respectively, a few weeks before Gallman was born; and on April 16, American aviator Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
Gallman, who was treated Wednesday to a stream of well-wishers and a catered lunch at the medical office, counted aviation among her personal milestones during the past year, as she traveled in an airplane for the first time, taking a trip to Kentucky.
"I've got a nephew who lives out there, and he wanted me to come out there to Kentucky; and he sent for me to come out there, and I went out there and stayed a week."
She is, however, no stranger to long-distance travel.
"I've done been to New York on the train. I've done been on a bus to New York. I've done been through the country in a car to New York," she said, recalling other family visits. "I had a brother that lived in Brooklyn. I have a sister that lived in Brooklyn, and I had a brother that lived in Jamaica," she said, referring to a neighborhood in Queens, New York.
As a child, she got her first job as a babysitter, at age 12; and these days, her job duties fall on Thursdays, when she scrubs three bathrooms and a small kitchen at the Aiken Surgical Associates facility, next door to Aiken Regional Medical Centers.
Gallman, a great-great-grandmother who has outlived two husbands and now lives by herself in an Aiken duplex, is an active member of Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church and has "Wheel of Fortune," "Jeopardy" and the Atlanta Braves among her recreational interests.
She said she advises others to "be nice to everybody, and if there's anything you can do to help them, try to help them do anything."
Bill Bengtson, a native of Florence, Alabama, has worked for Aiken Communications since 1996.