Few can claim what Ada Jennings of Oran possesses – a sharp memory and wit at the age of 104.
Members of her congregation at Oran Baptist Church helped her celebrate her birthday Thursday morning at Palo Pinto Nursing Center. As people came bearing gifts, including many she recognized, trickled into the small dining room, she repeated, “Oh my goodness!”
After a crowd of Pythian Sister Senior Angel Elves came through offered birthday and Christmas cheer and Jennings settled into her birthday party, she started to reminisce.
“I figured you’d throw me out,” she said to Lavesta Baggett, referring to her church status. “I haven’t been in a long time.”
“You’re still on our roll – you’re the oldest living member of Oran Baptist Church,” responded Baggett.
How long has she been a church member?
“I was 18 when I first moved to Oran, I think I was 18,” she said.
According to one friend and Oran neighbor, Maurine Burnett, Jennings married Aubrey Jennings at 16 and lived on a farm between Oran and Graford and had one daughter, Juanita.
At one point during Thursday’s activities, Burnett handed Jennings a large magnifying glass to read her cards. “This will take me a while,” Jennings said.
Jennings’ hearing and eyesight have faded some recently, but Burnett and others commented on how sharp her mind still is.
“It may take her a little while to think it up, but she can get it,” said Burnett.
When asked what she remembered, Jennings said, “I remember everything; I remember everybody.”
“I remember the first plane I ever saw,” she said. “It was a double-wing plane. They advertised it would be [in a town near the Red River] be there on Sunday and my dad loaded us up in the wagon and pulled right up to the fence and we watched.”
She followed this immediately with her recollection of the first car she saw.
“It was a T-model Ford,” she said. “It belonged to the rich people – we thought – who lived up the road.”
“We could hear that old car start from several miles [away],” she said. She and her siblings would “climb on the picket gate and watch it go by. We thought that was really something.”
She learned to drive late in life, according to Burnett. She said Jennings was 87 and never had a ticket when she coasted through a stop sign south of Mineral Wells.
Jennings said the officer told her, “Well, if you never have gotten a ticket, I won’t give you one for this.”
“She didn’t tell him she’d only been driving for a few years,” Burnett added with a smile.
Ada Jennings managed the grocery store in Oran by their two-story house, according to her church friends. She also worked for 14 years in the Mineral Wells “sewing factory” that made western shirts.
Burnett said the Jenningses lived in Nebraska for six years, working in a home for juvenile boys and girls.
“She said if you want to learn something you go be a house mother to [that] bunch of girls,” Burnett recalled Jennings once telling her.
In the depression, when money was tight, she received some money and was told she could buy anything she wanted. So, she bought a suit she had been eyeing in a catalogue, according to Burnett. The jacket fit, but the skirt was too tight.
Burnett said Jennings was so afraid that if she sent the suit back she wouldn’t get the same suit back, so she said Jennings spent 15 minutes sequestered upstairs each day. The solution – she said she went upstairs and locked the door and “took exercise” until she fit into the skirt.
“The one thing she always wanted and didn’t have was central heat and air,” said Burnett.
On Thursday, she recalled her house, which now belongs to the a woman who “wanted it since she was knee high to a duck,” said Jennings. “She still has my three cats – Mamie and two kittens. You can’t tell them apart, they’re all black. I cried when I left them. ”
Burnett confirmed that her three cats are still there and “big and fat and healthy.”
Jennings looked around Thursday and announced, “I like red. I got a new red top.”
Burnett said Jennings always did a nice job of putting on her makeup and she still dresses herself and applies her makeup.
“I sure didn’t do a very good job of tying my shoes,” Jennings said. A few eyes scanned toward her feet and perfectly-tied shoes. “I have to leave them loose,” she added.
In addition to the new red top, chocolates, sweets and camaraderie poured in through doors Thursday morning to honor the centenarian.
