It’s been a long time since then, but Jones, who turns 100 Sunday, said just like when she was young, the Independence Day holiday feels like an extension of her birthday.
With 100 candles, her birthday cake might look more like a fireworks display these days. On Wednesday, the Leavenworth resident of 84 years recalled some of the changes she’s seen over the last century.
“I’ve lived from the horse and buggy to the space age,” Jones said.
She also remembers an uncle helping to build the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Calif., and the switch from coal to gas as the preferred fuel to heat homes, a change that in turn might have spelled doom for one of Leavenworth’s largest industries at the time, the Great Western Stove Company.
May’s family will be hosting a 100th birthday reception for her from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Church of the Open Door’s fellowship hall, 4800 S. 20th St. Trafficway.
Born in Warsaw, Mo., in 1912, Jones said she always had a big family, with four brothers and four sisters and plenty of aunts and uncles. She said she had several relatives in Leavenworth who her family visited. It was on one of those visits that she met her future husband, Howard L. Jones, at the time a member of the youth group at the Church of the Open Door in Leavenworth. The church would become a pillar of their life together.
They married young, and Howard eventually became the pastor at the Church of the Open Door. She said she stayed home to raise the couple’s five children, later returning to the workforce as a Tupperware demonstrator and as a seamstress at the J.C. Penney in downtown Leavenworth.
The downtown, May said, looked a little different at that time.
“It was kind of an active town then,” she said.
May said she and her husband were active in their church community, where she was the president of several women’s groups, led youth groups and taught Sunday school. She said the congregation was like family.
“We went through the bad and the good with the people there,” she said.
In 1974, she said she traveled outside of the United States for the first time, taking a trip to Israel with Howard given to them as a gift from the church’s congregation. She said the experienced changed her, in some ways.
“Christmas and things always seemed surreal after we were there,” she said.
Howard passed away after 72 years of marriage, in 2001. Having lived so long, May said she’s also experienced the loss of three of her five children.
“When you begin to lose your children, that’s not good,” she said. “That’s a hard thing.”
She does, however, have plenty of grandchildren and great-grandchildren that she keeps in touch with as much as she can, given that she is harder of hearing and seeing than she used to be, making correspondence difficult.
“But most of them keep in touch with me, which is good,” she said.
One of her daughters, Sue Dragieff (LHS Class of 1957), said many of those relatives will be there to help her celebrate 100 years on Sunday. Asked about the secret of her longevity, May thought for a second.
“I don’t have a secret — it’s all in the Lord’s hands,” she said. “He knows why I’ve been here for 100 years — I sure don’t.”
Copyright 2012 Leavenworth Times. Some rights reserved
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