Courtesy Photo Virginia Carol Rice shows off her birthday cake after turning 100 years old on Christmas Day

HARRISVILLE — Born on Christmas Day in 1925, Virginia Carol Rice, nee Mausolf, was the best gift for Joseph and Eva Mausolf, the fifth child of seven.

Rice is now 100 years old.

She has always used her middle name, Carol, and is known affectionately by family and friends as “Christmas Carol”, daughter Rosie Gordon said.

Rice resides on a 40-acre farm in Harrisville, where she lives with her youngest son. Some of Rice’s four children, 12 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren recently came to visit the “old funny farm in Michigan”, as Rice put it in a poem she wrote in 2010, to celebrate Rice’s 100th birthday.

Rice was married to her husband Frank for 72 years before he passed in 2018, Gordon said. They had four children together, two sons and two daughters.

“Every birthday and Christmas she would buy us US savings bonds,” Gordon said. “She always bought gifts for everyone. She was kind of known for her care packages, we could get a big box, and she would wrap all kinds of things for us to open.”

“Christmas is her birthday and it was especially magical,” Renee Kingsland, one of Rice’s granddaughters, said in an email. “She collected little things for everyone throughout the year, saved them up, and presented them in one giant gift box. Going through the boxes together was our favorite event.”

When Gordon was a kid, the family celebrated Rice’s birthday each Christmas with a cake and gifts.

“We always celebrated her birthday with a special cake for her, sang happy birthday, and gave her birthday presents and Christmas presents so she didn’t miss out,” Gordon said. “We tried to make it special for her because it was her birthday also.”

Rice just cared about everybody, Gordon said. Everything she did she put love into. She made everyone feel like they were special and part of the family.

Growing up, Gordon said that Rice packed all the lunches for the four kids and her dad every day. Gordon would have a tuna salad sandwich, cookies, fruit, napkin, and carrot sticks in her lunch. Each lunch included the preferences of each family member.

“It was the envy of everyone in the lunch room,” she said.

Karen Porter, Rice’s oldest daughter, said that Rice was comical.

“She’d put on this big ole pointed hat and cackled like a witch,” Porter said.

She also remembers teaching her mother how to drive.

“She didn’t have a drivers license until 40 after I got mine,” Porter said.

Porter said Rice always made a big deal of everybody’s birthday.

“She did everything extra special,” Porter said. “Course, we didn’t realize how good we had it until we were adults.”

Reagan Voetberg can be reached at 989-358-5683 or rvoetberg@TheAlpenaNews.com.