The energetic neighbors play football in the street, sometimes in her yard. They often party into the night, and always on the weekends. Last St. Patrick’s Day, a beer bottle thrown at random crashed through her storm door as hundreds drank and danced in the street outside.

Yet she loves her young neighbors. And she defends them, and their exuberant lifestyle.

“I was young once. I knew how to party. I wanted to have a good time. As long as they are not hurting themselves, or property, or anyone else, then I believe that having fun is part of growing up.

“At first when they started moving in, I wore ear plugs at night to go to sleep. But now I can just tune it out. I say more power to them.”

The kids of college respect their “grandma” and look out for her. “We keep an eye on her house,” said Stanley Webber, 20, from Cincinnati. “Norma is a member of our campus family. I don’t know of any kids who don’t think the world of her. Some of us help her collect her cans.”

On homecoming weekend, it was like open house at her home, she said. “One kid would come in, and then another,” she remembered. “They came home for the weekend, and they came over to see me. They don’t forget me.”

Many students collect aluminum cans and drop them off on her rear porch.

“And along the route, some kids will pull cans for me, and shout encouragement,” she said.

Ten years ago, when she first began collecting cans, the idea bothered her.

“I felt that the kids were looking down at me,”she said. “But when the money started coming in, and I realized I was making an honest living this way, I thought, if they don’t like it . . . the heck with them.

“But now,” she says, “They stop and talk and ask how I am doing, and they are wonderful to me. Especially the boys.”

Fitzwater washes the cans she retrieves before taking them to a recycling center, where she gets 25 cents for each pound. She said she takes home an average of $50 a week when school is in session. “That has added up to about $13,000 in the last 10 years.”

In addition to buying things she normally would not have money for, Fitzwater uses the supplemental income to help pay for medical expenses and food for her six parakeets and two cats. Big Boy is a stray brown and white cat she took in 12 years ago. And there’s Stella, a small black cat acquired when a group of students living next door graduated and moved out in June.

“When the seniors move out, they leave all sorts of things behind,” she said. “I get radios, and bed spreads, and sheets, and towels and linens. I had a yard sale this past summer and made $1,000 on the stuff I found.”

She has four children of her own, 14 grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren, many of whom check on her regularly and come to visit.

But it is when she talks of her UD family that her eyes sparkle and she brims with enthusiasm.

“It is lonely when they are gone on break,” she said. “I enjoy this life. Too many people my age just sit around and don’t do a thing. I am healthy, except for some arthritis. I am very active. And I am very happy living right here with all my wonderful kids of the neighborhood right around me.

“You know what? They keep me young.”