Photos: Tampa matriarch votes after celebrating 104th birthday with Florida senators
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Familiar faces greeted Estella Vinson on Wednesday as she sat in the shade with her daughter before continuing her decades-long tradition of voting at the West Tampa Library.
She requested B.B. King and a person manning a grill left the barbecue sizzling to play her favorite song on his phone speaker.
“If we don’t straighten this country up, we’re going backwards,” Vinson’s daughter, Willie Mae Williams, 82, told State Sens. Lauren Book and Jason Pizzo during a chat while waiting to meet Sen. Janet Cruz, who gave Vinson a surprise birthday cake in the air conditioning of her campaign tour bus.
Vinson’s birthday was on Oct. 15, and she got to celebrate year 104 with the senators Wednesday before participating in early voting.
Williams remembers when Cruz visited their community center on another occasion when she said, “‘I don’t give a damn about the politics, I’m for what’s right,’ and I believe her.”
“I wish a lot of them believed that, or had that idea everything will be better,” Vinson said before walking to the ballot boxes.
