99-Year-Old Woman Buys iPad – Her First Computer

I don’t have a lot of family, at least not on my side. My grandparents have all passed, and most of the others are estranged in one way or another. Really, the only real relatives I have left are my Great Aunt & Uncle, and they live 2,500 miles away. I’ve often considered getting them a computer, if only for e-mail and the like, but I knew that they most likely couldn’t handle it. Setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot in their house doesn’t make a lot of sense, and should they ever have a problem, I’m way too far away to fix it. Thing is, I’d really like them to see pictures of their great-great grand nephew, and even video, too. Unfortunately, it’s not in the cards.

Then I see a video like this. It’s about Virginia Campbell, of Lake Oswego, Oregon. She’s 99 years old and has glaucoma, so reading isn’t what it used to be. A report on Oregon Live tells the tale:

“It’s changed her life,” said Ginny Adelsheim, one of her daughters.

Campbell, who graduated from Reed College in the early 1930s with a bachelor’s in English literature, has always been an avid reader. But she suffers from glaucoma, making it difficult to read.

Now she’s reading books on the iPad and writing limericks on it as well.

“The thing that’s so neat is  there’s nothing between you and the screen,” Adelsheim said. “You can enlarge the print, and it has a much brighter screen so you can read on it more easily than with a regular computer screen.”

Campbell, widow of former Lake Oswego Mayor C. Herald Campbell,  has never owned a computer before — or a Kindle.

But when she heard all the hype about the iPad she wanted one.

Looks like the Apple hype even extends to people born almost a century ago.

Now my Great Aunt and Uncle aren’t that old – they’re only 85. But maybe I can convince them to get into some new gear, if only to see their relatives grow up. Who knows?