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When Willie Christine King Farris was born, she was so sickly that when she wasn't crying, her tiny body would violently shake.

Doctors had no answers and her parents, Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Christine King, could do nothing but worry. Then, after two weeks of solid crying, she stopped.

"When I Didn't hear her anymore I rushed into the house and found her wide-eyed and at ease in her body. I just stared. Like that, it was over, just stopped," King wrote in "Daddy King: An Autobiography." "Now, sometimes when I recall those frightening first days of Christine's life, I feel that the illness, as severe as it was, may have strengthened her for the inordinately heavy responsibilities which would become a daily part of her adult life."

Eighty years later, Farris, the first of Daddy King's three children, and lone remaining sibling of Martin Luther King Jr., is still here. Still going strong as the matriarch of the King family.

"Here I am 80 and so many things have happened. You don't question anything, but I wonder why am I the one that is left," Farris said. "God must have me here for something. "

On Sunday, her family and Ebenezer Baptist Church held a birthday party for Farris, whose birthday was Sept. 11.

Holding the party at Ebenezer was fitting. She was born into the church that her grandfather, father and brothers pastored and is one of the longest-standing members of the church.

"Ebenezer is one of her first loves, that church and the people in it," said her other true love, her husband of 47 years, Isaac Farris Sr. "I always say that if she misses a regular service, things are not that comfortable in the Farris household that week."

'Taught us to be humble'In a strange way, Farris' 80th year of life represented an arrival of sorts. She will tell you, as will members of her family, that she chose to spend her life in the background, supporting first her parents, then her brothers and finally her sister-in-law as they shined.

Now, all of them are gone, and Farris finds herself at the head of one of the most significant black families in American history.