One Really Great Grandmother: Amazing true story of 101-year-old in that photo who grew up in the depression, went back to school-aged 43 and found true love in third marriage to childhood sweetheart at 80.
The Life Of Dad social network was inundated with equally poignant photos from its users after publishing a beautiful image of 101-year-old great-grandmother Rosa Camfield cradling her two-week-old great-granddaughter Kaylee. Readers from all over the world posed with the youngest members of their families, with the latter being newborn newborns in the majority of the photos.
The image of a 101-year-old Arizona grandmother cuddling her newborn great-granddaughter captivated the hearts of millions by spanning four generations of the same family in one snap.
The loving image of Rosa Camfield and baby Kaylee became an online sensation before it was announced that Rosa had sadly 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦 on Monday. Rosa’s granddaughter, Sarah Hamm, 33, chronicled her grandmother’s life from her traumatic upbringing during the Great Depression, to a painful divorce in the 1950s, to her third marriage – to her childhood sweetheart – in her 80s.
‘Grandma was always happy, I mean, she was smart as a whip, even at 101,’ said Hamm. ‘She was funny and had lots of stories.’ Hamm took the shot a week before her grandma died, after seeing her great-grandmother Rosa for the first time with her 2-week-old baby Kaylee.
Rosa had three children, five grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. ‘It was actually the day she was being released in the hospital, so we were hoping that Grandma would get to meet her,’ Hamm said.
Soon after she snapped the photo, it ended up on Life of Dad where it became a massive hit.
‘When I posted it I thought a few of our fans would feel connected to it as I did. Then, within an hour, it was clear that I had underestimated the impact it would have with people as it was shared and liked hundreds of times per minute,’ said Life of Dad founder Patrick Quinn.
Rosa Camfield, like the rare people who live to reach 100, had a lifetime’s worth of stories that her children, grandkids, and great-grandchildren recall fondly. Rosa’s eldest daughter, Lynn Vine, claims that her mother was born in 1913 on a fruit farm in Michigan. Before and during the Great Depression, Rosa’s family appears to have been in rather good financial shape. Her father was the first in their community to acquire both a radio and a car, and he used these to transport residents to their houses for evening entertainment. Rosa married her first of three spouses, a guy called Rubin, in the mid-1930s, with whom she had all three of her children.
While the couple was married, World War II broke out and the couple helped out by spotting planes. Unfortunately, the marriage didn’t last, and the couple divorced after about 15 years. Rosa chose to return to college after her divorce and earn her teaching degree while parenting her three children in her forties.
She spent much of her career teaching 8th grade at Ludington Public Schools, and her daughter Vine had her as a teacher one year. Rosa married two more times. Mert, her second husband, died in the mid-1980s, and she married Lennis Camfield, a childhood closest friend, a few years later. Rosa and Lennis were childhood friends who walked the same half-mile path to school every day.
After Hamm posted the photo online, hundreds of people shared similar pictures. Behind every picture is a story and Rosa’s is every bit as inspirational as the photograph that captivated the Internet.
