Alma Ross, a longtime North Philadelphia resident who contributed to her church and community, has died at 102

Alma Ross, 102, a retired licensed practical nurse known for her love of church, fashion, gardening, and helping others, died Thursday, Feb. 1, at her North Philadelphia home, of natural causes.

“She did not have cancer or a heart attack,” said her great-niece Monique Easterling. “She was just tired. She said she had lived a long life. And she just died in her sleep.”

Alma Napoleon was born Oct. 22, 1921, in Bennettsville, S.C., to Bessie Dudley and John B. Napoleon.

In an oral history project that The Inquirer published last year, Mrs. Ross talked of living a difficult life in South Carolina. Her parents separated when she was young, and she was reared mostly by her paternal grandmother.

She painted a bleak picture of hard work and facing discrimination in the segregated South.

“I didn’t have no silver spoon in my life. I had a hard time in my life,” Mrs. Ross told her interviewer, Jacqueline Wiggins. “I had to work on the farm and pick cotton and corn. Everything we had, we had to grow it. We couldn’t go to the market or anything.”

In the recording, Mrs. Ross described doing chores before school. Every morning, she woke up to make a fire in a heater, and then cooked breakfast. She then walked five miles to school and back.

As she and her classmates walked, she said white children rode past them in a school bus and called them names from the bus windows.

Mrs. Ross graduated from high school in South Carolina, her great-niece said.

Despite having had a hard life growing up, Mrs. Ross enjoyed life and said that living a long life was a joy.

“She was very witty; she was very funny,” Easterling said. “She had a lot of stories to tell. But she was never bitter as she told her stories about what she went through as a young girl, or what we went through as Black people. She didn’t talk about retaliation.”

At 21, she married Luther Ross, also of Bennettsville, and the couple had one daughter. They moved to Philadelphia and settled in North Philadelphia. But their daughter died at about age 2, Easterling said.

Later, Mrs. Ross adopted an infant daughter, Sharon Faison, and moved in 1965 to a house on North Van Pelt Street, where she lived until her death.

» READ MORE: 101 years of faith and working hard to build a life

In 1954, Mrs. Ross graduated from the Philadelphia School of Practical Nursing. After graduation, she worked as a nurse at the St. John Neumann Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare on Roosevelt Boulevard for 25 years.

In retirement, she was a member of the Secret Pal Club at the Martin Luther King Senior Center and enjoyed taking bus trips.

She also loved gardening. When five houses were torn down on her block, Mrs. Ross, who joined the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, planted trees and flowers. “She had apple trees, a peach tree, and flowers were everywhere,” Easterling said.

Easterling said her great-aunt was driving until she was 96: “When the state sent her driving license renewal form as she was about to turn 100, they told her she would have to take the driving test again. But she said she didn’t want to be bothered with that.”

Mya Jones, Mrs. Ross’s great-great-niece, said that for her 16th birthday she received a picture of a tree that Mrs. Ross had drawn, under which she had written, “Keep climbing until you get to the top.”

Easterling said she asked her aunt what they should do if, while climbing the tree, a branch broke and you fell down.

“She said, ‘Get up, dust yourself off, and keep climbing again,’” Easterling recalled.

Wiggins, from the oral history project, said she met Mrs. Ross when both were members of the now-closed St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church. While Mrs. Ross had grown up in the Baptist Church, she converted to Catholicism after adopting her daughter Sharon, whom she wanted to attend Catholic school. In 1993, St. Elizabeth’s closed and merged with St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church.

“Lady Ross,” as she was known, was involved in many activities at the church.

She also loved fashion, Wiggins said.

“She was famous for dressing so beautifully, and her hats matched her outfits to a tee,” Wiggins said.

Mrs. Ross was a member of several St. Martin de Porres ministries such as the Hospitality Committee, the Golden Age Club, Willing Workers, the Martineer Women, and the Women’s Day Committee. She was also an auxiliary member of the Knights of Peter Claver Court #187 for 35 years and the Sister Thea Bowman Chapter 34, Ladies of Grace, for 24 years.

Her husband and adopted daughter died earlier, as did a brother, John Napoleon Jr. In addition to Easterling and Jones, Mrs. Ross is survived by a niece, Patricia Easterling, and several other relatives, friends and members of the St. Martin de Porres Church family.

A Mass of Christian Burial was held at St. Martin de Porres on Feb. 9. Interment was at Mount Peace Cemetery in North Philadelphia.