Still a lively stepper: Leana “Jitterbug” Manuel turns 100
Published 7:47 pm Monday, April 5, 2021
Rita LeBleu
Leana ‘Jitterbug’ Manuel may not swing like she did when she was young, but not much gets past this 100-year-old with dancing eyes and a bopping good sense of humor.
“I’m surprised you haven’t asked me my age,” Manuel said. “I thought that was why you were here. I just had a birthday you know. Everyone brought presents. Did you?”
She was born March 9, 1921 in Iowa, Louisiana to Henry and Leona Manuel. She recently celebrated the occasion at her residence at Villa Maria Retirement Center in Lake Charles. JoAnn Prescott, who is the wife of Manuel’s nephew Maurice, helped fill in many of the details about Manuel.
“She grew up in Lake Charles,” Prescott said, “the sixth child of six boys and four girls: Hazel, Dominique, Abram, Maurice, Carrie, Curl, Rosa, Jimmie and Hank.”
Maurice Prescott was named for Manuel’s brother who was killed during World War II.
“Her father was a sharecropper, and also drove a school bus,” Prescott said, “convenient for transporting such a large family.”
“We always had something to eat,” Manuel said. “My mother was a great cook. We had a garden. She baked bread and kept some for us and sold the rest.”
She was in her 20s when her parents divorced. He moved to Westlake and died in 1956.
“I really missed my daddy when he left,” she said.
All the children worked to help pay for the family home on Moss Street after the divorce.
“Some places allowed you to work if you were under a certain age,” Manuel said. “Some didn’t.
Manuel graduated from LaGrange High School in 1938 when it was still located on Ryan Street and had only 11 grades.
“Of all the siblings, she was the only high school graduate,” Prescott said.
She’s proud of her accomplishment, but certain she would not want to go back and do it again, especially with the ways education has changed.
The job she recalls enjoying the most was one of her first, at the Paramount Theatre, and commented that the movies of that time were much better than now, so good she would have a hard time narrowing down a favorite.
She worked as a waitress at Tom and Mac’s Drive Inn Restaurant on Broad Street, and loved being a waitress, Prescott said. She spent 20 years as a bookkeeper at Miller’s House of sports on Common Street.
“Her love of waitressing brought her back to the restaurant industry and she was again a waitress or a hostess at restaurants that include the Red Fox Inne on West College Street,” Prescott said. “She worked very hard and was very frugal. She bought two homes and enjoyed socializing with friends and family.”
“I always worked,” Manuel said, “always.”
She worked through her 80s, but jokingly took offense that it was assumed she was retired simply because she was 100 and living in a retirement community. She never married nor had any children. However, she enjoys the attention and care of that she receives, considering the staff her friends, Prescott said.
To the question, have you ever been in love, she snapped back: “How do you know I’m not still?”
She described some men as “full of crap” and others as “nice and sweet.”
“Leanna loves the Catholic Church and for years has been a member of Our Lady Queen of Heaven,” Prescott said. “Each day at home, she would try to pray three rosaries a day.”
“Jesus and I have our own little private talks, Leanna said. “If He doesn’t answer when I call the first time, he always calls me back later.”
Though she is mostly confined to a wheelchair today, Leanna Manuel has survived the depression, profound changes in technology and COVID-19.
“She still loves to hear the music and she moves her shoulders and arms to the beat,” Prescott said.
Manuel said she has learned a lot as she has gone along, including, “You can’t have it all, and you don’t need it all.”
Leana ‘Jitterbug’ Manuel was born March 9, 1921 in Iowa, La., to Henry and Leona Manuel. She recently celebrated her 100th birthday at her residence at Villa Maria Retirement Center in Lake Charles.
