- April 25, 2024
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Sadie Perry is known by some people as the fruit lady. She has lived in Flagler Beach for 35 years, and every Friday she makes her way to the Flagler Beach Farmers Market, where she sifts through the "seconds," or the produce the farmers can’t sell but is still good to eat. She fills the trunk of her car and then delivers the fruits and vegetables to people she says can’t get them on their own.
“That’s my charity work,” she said as she sat in a chair at the Wickline Center on Wednesday afternoon. A happy birthday headband made from felt sat upon her head, and two tables full of friends surrounded her.
Perry was celebrating her 95th birthday.
“There she is, 95, older by 20 or 30 years than some of these people she is serving,” Michele Barpeau said of the birthday girl’s generosity.
After pondering everything she knows about Sadie, Barpeau said it can all be summed up by saying that she does two key things that Jesus commanded us to do: She loves God with all her mind, heart and spirit and loves her neighbor as herself.
Perry’s celebration was of her birth, but it's just one of two birthdays that she celebrates each year.
In 1946, she and her husband, who was a pilot, were flying their two-passenger Cessna from North Carolina to Ohio when they hit a bad rain storm.
“I thought we were going to buy a house, but we bought an airplane instead,” she said, sidetracking from her story.
They were running out of gas and needed to crash-land the plane. They found an opening between the trees, and her husband, William, landed the plane along the railroad track. Sadie said the landing was beautiful, but when they hit the grass, which was knee deep and slick, they skidded into a fence, and the plane rolled over.
“We both crawled out, and we didn’t get hurt,” she said. “Now, I celebrate two birthdays a year. I celebrate the day God saved my life from the airplane crash, and I celebrate the birthday that I was born into the Johnson family.”
Sadie said she was overwhelmed with joy that her friends could celebrate with her for lunch on Wednesday. She said her mother lived to 103, and she hopes she has many more years in her.
