A fine century

On Jan. 28, Faye Elsie Tomlinson Wookey celebrated a very special milestone — her 100th birthday.

Wookey was born in 1916 on a farm east of Red Oak, on what is now the Red Oak Country Club.

“I had an older brother and younger sister who were born there too,” Wookey  remembered. “When the Country Club offered to buy the farm, my dad sold it to them, and we moved into Red Oak for a few years. I was in the second grade when my folks bought a farm four miles west of Red Oak and we moved there. Then I went to country school, Garfield No. 6, through sixth grade.

“To get to school, we walked the mile-and-a-quarter each way in all kinds of weather. In the winter, we often walked on top of the snow drifts and many days we had to plod through the deep mud. At one time we had as many as 26 children in the school with all the eight grades.

“When it was time for my older brother to go to high school, my folks bought him a car.

Of course there were no buses in those days. They figured I might just as well ride with him, so from seventh grade on through high school, I went to Red Oak again.

“I took normal training in high school and when I graduated I was qualified to teach school. That was 1933, when we were in the Great Depression. Jobs, including teaching, were hard to come by. I only did a little substitute teaching here and there, never a steady position. In those days, a full-time teacher could earn $35 a month. By comparison, someone who did house cleaning made about $2 a week.

“In the early ‘30s, times were really hard. Lots of people were losing their farms. 

We did everything we could to raise money to save our farm. We had a big vegetable garden, with seven acres of tomatoes. We ordered tin cans from Sears, or maybe it was Montgomery Ward, and canned the tomatoes and sold them. One summer we canned 10,000 cans. And at that time there was no electricity.

“There were no paved roads either. I remember watching them put up the base for Old 34 with mules and a slip scraper. There were a lot of mules!”

Faye Wookey met her husband to be, Adrian Wookey, when she was just 16, and they were married when she turned 19. They had three daughters, Elaine, Charlotte and Helen, and one son, Kenneth. Tragedy struck in 1965 when Kenneth, a junior in college, was killed in a car accident. 

“Life can deal you some pretty rough punches,” she said.

Wookey learned to be a hard worker in her youth, and hasn’t slowed down much over time. She baked and decorated wedding cakes for every one of her eight grandchildren and many other people too, has made dozens of quilts, is famous for her sewing and also for her cooking, especially her rye bread.  

At the age of 80, just after the death of her husband, she sat down and wrote a book chronicling her life’s memories. 

Asked what she thinks of today’s world, she is quick to say that she thinks most things were better in the old days.

“Our kids learned to do everything because there was everything to do. They learned to work hard, and I think that was good for them. In school, they were taught to write cursive, and it had to be perfect. Today some kids can’t even sign their name. I think we’re doing our children a disservice by not teaching them cursive.”

Is there anything she thinks is better today?

“Electricity! And running water and indoor plumbing,” she answered.

To what does she attribute her long life and good health?

“Well, just living one year after another. Having good genes helps. My father lived until he was just 19 days short of 100. But the most important things are hard work and faith.”