Carlotta Niles, 102, Is Just Back From Safari
by John Burton
SHREWSBURY – Members of the Maasai in Kenya, Africa, bestowed a name on Carlotta Niles when she visited their village in February: They called her “Namunyak”—“The Lucky One.”
The centenarian-plus, long time Shrewsbury resident couldn’t agree more.
“I’ve been fabulously lucky,” Niles said. “I’ve been healthy, very healthy. I’ve been comfortably well off.
“It’s been a fabulous life,” she said.
Niles decided to go on safari to celebrate her 103rd birthday, which is coming up in May. She traveled to Kenya and Tanzania and spent two weeks with her daughter, Diana Niles King, granddaughter Betsy Ford and Betsy’s husband, Gunter Ford. Safari guides gave her their own nickname, calling her “Mama Safari.”
“It was absolutely terrific,” she said, bubbling up with enthusiasm. “We saw everything we could see,” including getting to see two full-grown lions who had made their way up a tree. “I thought that was pretty remarkable,” she offered, “because I heard it was pretty rare.”
Niles and her family members also had the chance to ride atop elephants and take hot air balloons above the African plains (and remember Niles is approaching 103!).
“We travel a lot,” she said of her family. And over the years Niles has ventured to Finland, Turkey (where she ballooned, as well) and even spent time in Mongolia, staying in a yurt (a round tent, often made of animal skins used by indigenous nomads). She went on her first African safari about 25 years ago.
To celebrate her 100th birthday she and family members traveled to France where they stayed outside Paris in a reconstructed farmhouse. Niles flew over area vineyards in a hot air balloon.
Roughly a decade ago Niles had scheduled to go skydiving, she said, but plans fell apart.
“I’ve been almost everywhere I really wanted to go,” she noted.
Niles is spry given her years—though acknowledging her hearing isn’t what it used to be—and had even continued to drive, relinquishing her license in just the last half-year or so, now keeping her vintage MG Roadster in her garage except when her daughter occasionally uses it.
“I do miss it terribly,” she acknowledged about the license.
The traveling works into her philosophy on living a long life. “Staying active is the key,” she believes. “I do think you should be active both physically and mentally.”
Up until pretty recently, she would regularly go to New York City, attending the theater and lectures. Only a short time ago had she had to give up tennis. A personal trainer who comes to her home three times a week –“He marches me around and has me do stretching exercises”— and regularly indulges in her passion for playing bridge, having friends and occasionally her grandson, Jonathan, over for games.
Niles has lived in her Shrewsbury home since she and her now late husband, Jonathan Niles, had it built in 1935. After they first got married in 1931, when Carlotta was 18, the young couple lived first in New York City, where her husband’s family lived, and then in Red Bank before settling in Shrewsbury.
Niles mother, June Elvidge, was a silent screen actress in the very early days of movies. Niles remembered her mother, a tall, brunette beauty, usually played the vamp, luring the hero away from the pure heroine. “I wasn’t allowed to go see her movies,” Niles recalled, “because I’d see my mother being bad.”
Her husband, who died in 1987, was from an affluent family and worked as a newspaperman for the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press. “He wrote so well,” she noted. He also ignited Niles’ interest in travel, with her husband insisting they spend summer vacations in Paris and London, where Jonathan would offer Carlotta his encyclopedic knowledge of history, she remembered.
Along with staying active, Niles recommends not getting stressed out, especially about things you can’t control. “Don’t get rattled,” she advises with a wag of the finger.
Despite her own advice, Niles is acknowledging she is slowing down a little bit, conceding this foray to Africa will likely be her last long excursion. It required an exhausting 35 hours of flying. “I do have some physical complaints,” which has led her to realize, “I should do some things close to home.”
