Agnes M. Wetzel celebrated her 21st birthday shortly after women received the right to vote in the United States in 1920.

Since then, she has voted in 15 presidential elections, including the last one by absentee ballot. She also has lived through two World Wars, watched the Liberty Tunnels being built in Pittsburgh and was alive when the Titanic sank.

Mrs. Wetzel will celebrate her 110th birthday on Sunday. It's a milestone few can imagine, and she said she enjoys the attention and the many questions from those seeking her secret to longevity.

"I tell them, 'Eat what you want, drink what you want and pray a lot,' " she said. "Everyone wants to see what someone this old looks like," she added, recalling a recent hospital stay that prompted an abundance of staff attention.

Mrs. Wetzel was born in 1899. She grew up in the city neighborhood of Montooth, located above the current Liberty Tunnels. She recalls walking past the temporary housing built for the labor force during the construction of the tunnels.

"I was probably 15 or 16 years old. I remember walking down two flights of steps past the workers. It took quite a while to build the tunnels," she said.

She also remembers how the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was big news.

"The newsboys were all out on the street shouting about it," she said.

Mrs. Wetzel lives in Bethel Park with her daughter, Bette Wetzel. She took no medications until her 90s. She is blind from macular degeneration, but she is up every day at 7:30 a.m. listening to talk radio until bedtime at 9 p.m.

"If I go out on errands, she fills me in on the goings on around town when I get back," Bette Wetzel said.

Though her husband, Lemuel Wetzel, died more than 30 years ago at age 78, Mrs. Wetzel can recall the details of their courtship dating back to 1917.

"We were supposed to see a band at McKinley Park," she said. "But, he stood me up," she said.

She later forgave him when he explained he had overslept following a camping trip.

Mr. Wetzel joined the Army in World War I. He sent numerous love letters, but Mrs. Wetzel kept only one: A poem with rhyming stanzas in her husband's looping handwriting, describing his hope to see Agnes again.

The two were reunited, marrying in 1920, and they had a son, Lewis, and a daughter, Bette. The couple's son died in 2001. Mrs. Wetzel has two grandsons and three great-granddaughters.

Mrs. Wetzel and her daughter live in the Bethel Park home that Mr. and Mrs. Wetzel bought in 1966.

Agnes Wetzel hopes her daughter also lives a long life, but Bette Wetzel is not convinced.

"I don't have a daughter to take care of me," she said.

Upon reaching 110, Mrs. Wetzel joins an elite group of super-centenarians, defined as individuals 110 years of age or older. She also can register with the nonprofit Gerontology Research Group that along with Guinness Book of World Records is responsible for validating the oldest people in the world.

Bette Wetzel keeps her mother's birth certificate safely stored in a safety deposit box and plans to investigate having her mother officially recognized as one of the oldest people in the world.

If her documentation passes their scrutiny, Kama Chinen, of Japan, qualifies as the oldest living person in the world at 114 years old.

Mrs. Wetzel will celebrate her birthday early with a cake delivered tomorrow by staff at Nurse Finders Home Care, based in Carnegie. They visit once a month to administer a vitamin shot that helps keep her appetite and energy level up.

Ms. Wetzel has no plans for her actual birthday. But it may include takeout from her favorite restaurant, Peter's Place in Collier.

"She loves her fried shrimp," Bette Wetzel said.

For more information on the Gerontology Research Group and a list of super-centenarians, go to www.grg.org.

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