Our mission at LACEA has always been simple: celebrate your lives. Carrie Gabriel made that easy.
When RLACEI First Vice President and Publicity Director Beverly Clark brought Carrie’s story to Alive! four years ago, I was curious. When I actually met Carrie, days before her 100th birthday, sharp as a tack, no walker, no glasses, cooking her own meals and ready to talk your ear off about politics, I was humbled. Here was a woman who had given this City 32 years of her life beginning in 1946, and she was still showing up. Still engaged. Still present. She didn’t need us to celebrate her. Frankly, she could have celebrated herself just fine.
We featured her in Alive!, and readers felt exactly what I felt standing in her presence: that rare warmth of being near someone who has figured something out that the rest of us are still working on. What I didn’t expect was what came after.
Carrie began sending me letters and cards. Handwritten. Thoughtful. Personal. Not a form of politeness but genuine connection, the kind you cannot manufacture. I wrote back. And just like that, a correspondence was born between a CEO and a centenarian who had absolutely no obligation to keep in touch with me but chose to anyway. That choice said everything about who she was.
There was something unmistakably spiritual about Carrie. Not performative. Real. The kind of faith that doesn’t announce itself but somehow fills the room. At some point, I asked her directly if she would pray for me. I meant it sincerely. I believed, and still believe, that this woman had a direct frequency channel to heaven. One hundred years of living right earns you that kind of access. She laughed and told me she already had been. Of course she had.
Beverly, who knew Carrie well, has shared what those of us who were fortunate enough to spend time with her already sensed: Carrie was resilient in the truest sense, not hardened by life but deepened by it. She lost her only son in 2023 and kept moving forward. She embraced technology while others her age declined the invitation. She spoke her mind, loved deeply, laughed often, and never let age become an excuse.
She passed on March 31. at 104, following a fall. (Read Beverly’s remembrance of Carrie inside this issue.) The City she served for more than three decades lost a daughter. We lost a friend.
At LACEA, we say we exist to celebrate lives. Carrie Gabriel’s life didn’t need any help from us. But I am grateful, profoundly grateful, that we got to be a small part of hers.
Rest well, Carrie. And thank you for the prayers.
¡Gracias por leer! -Robert