“When I went to high school, I never got the chance to go to college,” she told the Globe earlier this year, speaking in her smooth-as-honey Southern accent. “I was happy to present money for them to go to college.”
Her cause of death was not immediately available, but a longtime friend said she died in her sleep, in the apartment where she had lived for the past 45 years. It was only in the last year that she came to need round-the-clock care.
Mrs. Senhouse, who was born before the first World War in heavily segregated Piedmont, W. Va., lost both her parents by the time she was 6 years old. She moved to Woburn to live with an aunt in 1927 for the chance to finish high school and attend college. Since childhood, she’d been fascinated by the workings of the human body and dreamed of becoming a nurse.
Mrs. Senhouse set her sights on Boston Medical Center, which was then known as Boston City Hospital, an imposing, block-long series of brick buildings in the city’s South End. City Hospital was a mecca for Boston’s poorest residents; it’s where they would go for care, and when she was ready to apply in 1931, it had recently opened a nurse training program for Black women.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
Mrs. Senhouse had not often ventured outside Woburn on her own, but she was determined. She figured out the bus to the city and walked into the hospital in the South End, eager for her interview.
That’s as far as she got.
“They were only taking two Blacks in City Hospital,” she recalled in an interview with the Globe last year.
Those two slots for Black nursing students were filled, an administrator told her. The hospital had its quota, and that was it. No word on when another slot might open. No information available on when she might check back.
Mrs. Senhouse went on to work as a housekeeper for several families and became a beacon in the community for many young Black people.
A petite woman, she was known for her infectious laughter and her uncanny ability to attract friends of all ages.
“She was small but had big-person energy,” said Veronica Chapman, 43, an author and social advocate who met Mrs. Senhouse at a Framingham hair salon about 18 years ago and ended up with an invitation to dinner and the start of a lasting friendship.
There was the time Chapman took Mrs. Senhouse to see the Pointer Sisters in Rhode Island, and lead singer Ruth Pointer noted at the end of the 2017 concert that the then-106-year-old was in the audience. Mrs. Senhouse ended up as the star of the show.
And the New Year’s Eve a year later when Chapman and a few of her thirtysomething friends joined Mrs. Senhouse and her friends for a quiet celebration. They started playing the marathon-like card game Phase 10 at 7 p.m. It was still going nine hours later.
“We were in our 30s and knocked out,” Chapman said. “We were falling asleep at the table but there was auntie and her 80-plus year old friends still playing.”
Mrs. Senhouse delighted in trips with friends to Encore Casino, fascinated by its grand red crystal chandeliers and over-the-top floral arrangements. Though she only played the penny slots and set herself a strict $20 limit, she was treated like royalty by the management. The casino sometimes sent a car to pick her up and, on one occasion, she was greeted personally by the company’s chief operating officer.
Born before talking pictures and traffic lights, she was mesmerized by self-driving cars and proud of her ‘Alexa,’ a computer-based voice assistant that allowed her to call out favorite jazz tunes to play through her TV.
Though she left West Virginia at an early age, she hardly escaped the racism she grew up with. She didn’t dwell on the subject, but when asked, she’d relate stories years later of being admonished for touching the hats in a Florida store that didn’t allow Black people to try on clothing, or for standing up for decent living conditions when a former employer in Massachusetts wanted to house her and her husband in a dingy room with poor ventilation.
“She didn’t internalize the anger about it,” said Chapman. “She told me, ‘If there’s something you can do about it, do something. But if you can’t, leave it alone ‘cause it causes stress and stress is unhealthy.’”
Today, the hospital that more than 90 years earlier turned Mrs. Senhouse away will benefit from her decision to donate hours of her time to medical research, so that scientists might one day help others live as healthy and long a life as she had.
When Mrs. Senhouse was 105, she enrolled in the New England Centenarian Study at Boston Medical Center.
The centenarian study, now housed at Boston University’s Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, is the world’s oldest and largest research program of its kind. It includes several long-running studies, as well as a massive biobank with tens of thousands of pieces of data amassed over decades from more than 3,000 centenarians and their offspring, data derived from blood samples, cognitive tests, brain scans, medical records, and in-depth interviews.
The goal of the studies and the data collection is to pinpoint the genes, proteins, lipids, and other precious substances in the biological stew of rare souls like Mrs. Senhouse that fuels their longevity. The hope is to essentially capture this secret sauce in medicine that can help others enjoy a much longer span of good health.
“It was such an incredible gift to have her so nearby and to be able to visit her,” said Dr. Tom Perls, a professor at the medical school and founder of the centenarian study.
“She never could say anything bad about anybody and was always so gracious and kind, and always saw the positive side of things,” Perls said Monday. “It was impressive and inspiring.”
When asked about how she managed to live so long — none of her siblings made it past their 80s — Mrs. Senhouse would advise people to stop stressing.
“You’ll go to the grave before the people you’re stressing about,” she’d say.
She also joked that not having children probably added a few years to her life, as well.
Mrs. Senhouse leaves more than 70 great and great great nieces and nephews ranging in age from 3 to 75. She is predeceased by her husband, William “Billy” Senhouse, who worked for the MBTA before his death in 1998.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Dec. 21 at Myrtle Baptist Church in West Newton.
Kay Lazar can be reached at kay.lazar@globe.com Follow her @GlobeKayLazar.
