A century of strength

The wood inside Ivanell McBryde’s house still shows the work of her hands. After the home was built in 1959, she stained it — board-by-board — herself.

On April 23, she turned 100 years old in the same house, surrounded by photographs of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, each one representing a different part of her life.

But McBryde’s story doesn’t begin in Azle. She was born in Grapevine, and her father moved the family to West Texas to care for his widowed mother, who lived until McBride was nine. She grew up in a large household, the youngest of eight children. She was so much younger than the rest of her siblings that by the time she was born, she already had nieces and nephews.