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Lillian Jacobs Phillips spent over half of her life as a hairdresser in Washington before retiring at 94. She was born near Leggetts Crossroads on October 10, 1924, to Ramos and Rosa Hardy Jenkins, the oldest of eight children. “My grandmother Ida Gray Lilly was a midwife and delivered me there at our house,” said Phillips. “So here I am,” she expressed with a huge grin and a chuckle.

Her father owned a tobacco farm, so she spent many a day as a child out in the field suckering the tobacco then hanging it as high as she could in the wind beams along the tier poles that ran the length of the tobacco barn. But the work didn’t stop there. “I used to help my mother all around the house,” said Phillips. “I would scrub the floors and cut broom sage to make brooms to sweep the floor. Practically, anything that needed to be done, I could do it.”

At a very young age, Phillips also lost her father. “Someone murdered him for his money and threw him in a well, and that was it,” said Phillips. “They never did find out who did it. He never had a chance to see me grow up. But I do remember the days when I used to sit on his toe shoe and play hobby horse up and down.”

As she got older, Phillips did what she could to help bring in some additional income. That included traveling to Washington in their horse-drawn wagon with her stepfather to sell lightwood splinters for kindling. “I would tie them up in bundles and walk door-to-door in Washington and sell them for a nickel a bundle,” said Phillips. “I used to use the money to buy myself a pair of shoes, as sometimes all I had were inner tubes around my feet to keep them from getting cold or wet. My Mama also used the money to buy us food or whatever else we might need at the time.”

Philips attended Old Ford School as a child. But, she never did have a chance to go to high school as her mother didn’t have the money to send any of the children. At 16, she ran away and got married to Edwin Manning. “He was in the service during the war and wound up being stationed at a base near Rockford, Illinois,” said Phillips. “While we were there, I worked in a defense plant. I used to help make some of the things they used to fight with over in Europe.” She and thousands of other women became known as ‘Rosie the Riveter.’

Following the war, the two returned to Washington, where he, too, was a tobacco farmer. They went on to have four children. Phillips worked at Woolworth’s Five and Dime for five years, became an inspector at the Dr. Pepper Plant, and went on to work at National Spinning Company for five years. It was there that she first became interested in becoming a hairdresser. “One of the girls I worked with said she was going to school to become a hairdresser,” said Phillips. “She told me how much money you could make, so I thought I would give it a try. I guess I was just getting tired of working day labor.”

Phillips used her earnings from the National Spinning Company to pay her way through school. And she did not let the idea of working during the day interfere with her studies. “I used to cut the individual pages out of the cosmetologist book, roll them up, and stick them in my pocket,” said Phillips. “I used to run the spinning frames, so when I got all of the frames spinning real good, I would take out the pages and read them by heart. When I took my state board, they thought I had copied it out of the book. All I did was memorize it, as there was a time when I could quote the entire book word for word.” Needless to say, she passed her test.

Phillips went on to open her first shop on Hackney Boulevard near Third Street. In April of 1967, she opened Lillian’s at 139 E. Main Street, the first beauty salon to be built from the ground up in Washington. “I met so many wonderful people over the years,” said Phillips. “I don’t ever recall meeting anyone who wasn’t nice. One of my customers was Murray Hamilton, who played the town mayor in the movie ‘Jaws.’ It was such a nice shop, but at 94, I finally decided to put the scissors down.”

On October 10, Phillips will turn 100. And looking back over her first 100 years, she has no regrets and wouldn’t change a thing. “I was born on the same day as my daddy, so I always say a prayer for him, as he never had a chance at life,” said Phillips. “I love all of my children. I love everything that I have done. I learned a lot while peddling lightwood bundles as a child. I also made a lot of people happy doing their hair and never had one person come back to me and say they didn’t like it. I have no regrets at all. It’s all about what you make out of it all and I thank God for the days he has given me.”

At the end of an interview with the Daily News, Phillips said she also used to be a singer on the radio in Greenville. And without prompting, she broke out with a “Yodel-ay-hee, yodel-ay-hee-hooooooo,” as she sat there beaming as if she was in front of the microphone one more time.