A Tennessee woman saw the ocean for the first time ever on Wednesday- just several weeks before her 101st birthday, the Associated Press reported.
Ruby Holt, 100, giggled when the waters of the Gulf of Mexico touched her feet for the first time while standing on an Alabama beach.
"I've heard people talk about [the ocean] and how wonderful it was and wanted to see it, but I never had the opportunity to do so," Holt told the AP.
Born on Dec. 13 a century ago, Holt spent most of her life living on a rural farm in Giles County, Tennessee. But hours spent picking cotton and long days at the shirt factory where she worked- not to mention raising four children- left no time for trips to the beach.
Her family also didn't have the money to travel to the coast, Holt told the AP.
Not too long ago, two employees at the assisted living home where Holt lives learned she never saw the ocean before.
"They did a water gun fight out in the courtyard during the summer and water got brought up, the beach, and that's what she told the girls, that she had never been," Mark Davis, executive director of Sterling House where Holt lives at Brookdale Senior Living Solutions, told the AP.
So both workers filled out an application with the Wish of a Lifetime organization, which grants wishes for the elderly, to send Holt to the coast. The application was approved in November, and thanks to funding from the organization and Brookdale, Holt got to travel 400 miles to the Gulf, farther than she's ever been from home.
"When we got to the room yesterday she was just pointing out the ocean and, you know, her facial expressions and...she was just speechless," Davis told the AP.
After dipping her feet into the water, a couple of aides helped the centenarian go for a stroll across the sands of Orange Beach.
"We don't have nothing like this in Giles County," Holt told the AP.
