Grace Young, 111 years old, made an impact in her long, full life

Grace M. (Yockey) Young was raised in the horse-and-buggy era and lived all of her 111 years in the Alle-Kiski Valley.

Born in 1904, she died early Tuesday in West Haven Manor, where she had lived about two years.

She never drove a car but she still had a tremendous impact, said daughter Arline Bemis of Allegheny Township.

“She was one of a kind,” she said.

Young was raised on a farm in Washington Township. She was short and her brothers had to lift her up to get on a horse-drawn buggy to go to school, Bemis said.

Grace, who was the middle child of seven and the last surviving member of the Yockey family, attended through about the seventh grade.

In those days, there were other priorities for women. Working at home and then marrying, starting a family and staying home with the children were the norm.

Young did just that and enjoyed the baking, cleaning, crocheting and all the things that make a home run smoothly, her family said.

In the 1920s, she married Paul E. Young and the couple had three children, two of whom are alive, and settled in as a homemaker and active member of Poke Run Presbyterian Church, the church's Woman's Circle and the Woman's Club of Washington Township.

“She taught dozens of women to bake and cook,” Bemis said.

Her niece, Sharon Roppolo, remembers that the best place to hang out in her childhood was her grandparents' farm. Roppolo lived a short distance away.

“I enjoyed staying there in the summer, feeding the chickens and working in the garden,” she said.

Young made her granddaughter feel grown up even at an early age.

“Even though it was only an eighth-of-a-mile away, Roppolo asked her grandmother to not fill in Roppolo's mother about how she was doing.

Young had a gift to be kind to all people no matter how she was treated, Bemis said.

Young and her husband were married about 70 years before his death in 1994. Grace moved into McMurtry Towers in Vandergrift, where she lived for 17 years before moving into West Haven Manor.

“She was the oldest person there,” Bemis said, “but she looked like the youngest.”

Young lived to enjoy Bemis, and her sister, Frieda Mahen, Roppolo, Kunkle, four great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.

Mahen wasn't available for comment Wednesday.

Young was a “human history book” for many people who wanted to know what it was like before cars crowded the roads and the focus of some people shifted away from the family, Bemis said.

Young particularly enjoyed her 100th birthday.

Then a couple of months ago, Young fell and fractured her hip, Bemis said.

“Mother had congestive heart failure for years but it won in the end,” she said.

Young's sweet personality prompted her daughter to tell her something time after time.

“I told her she was already an angel and only lacked angel wings,” Bemis said. “Now, she has those.”

Visitation will be 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday in the Curran-Shaffer Funeral Home and Crematory Inc., Apollo. Services will be there Friday at 11 a.m. Burial services, in Greenwood Memorial Park, Lower Burrell will be private.

Chuck Biedka is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 724-226-4711 or cbiedka@tribweb.com.