Former Pin-up Girl Now 102, World's Oldest Columnist

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"I have packed more into my lifetime than most."

Margaret Caldwell, 1940s pin-up girl and friend of famous film stars, now 102 years old, is the world's oldest newspaper columnist. She lives in Nevada, but never visits Vegas.

"I think the slogan 'What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas' is totally wrong," she told OhmyNews. "It denotes the wrong kind of reputation for Las Vegas. What happens in Las Vegas should be in the public domain as far as I am concerned."

Margaret writes a weekly column for the Desert Valley Times in Mesquite, Nevada, owned by Gannett Co., Inc. which publishes 85 daily newspapers, including the national newspaper USA TODAY (circulation 2,284,219), and nearly 900 non-daily publications.

David Bly, http://davidbly.net/aboutme.php editor and general manager of the Desert Valley Times, says "I interviewed Margaret as a centenarian, and was so taken with her wit and sharpness I asked her to write a weekly column, which she has been doing faithfully ever since under the title, 'Memoirs of a Crone,' which was her choice of titles.

"She simply writes about her life, and our readers are very fond of her... She still has a way with words."

OhmyNews interviewed Margaret by email. Here are the Q and A:

Q. When and where was your first writing published?

A. My first writing was published in 1980 by Warner Books, a novel called "Born To The Sun". I have written another book which is a sequal called "I Married A Genius", which I am presently attempting to sell.


Q. Which newspapers or magazines have published your work?

A. I wrote for the Chicago Tribune during World War II as Administrator for Women's Actuvities Civil Defense and now here in Mesquite for the Desert Valley Times.


Q. How many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren do you have, and where do they live?

A. I only have one child, a daughter, who lives with me here in Mesquite. [Her 76-year-old daughter, Patrisha, posts Margaret's columns for her.]

Q. When and why did you move to Nevada?

A. I moved to Nevada to be with my daughter and son-in-law, now deceased, in 1997. They lived in Las Vegas and I lived with them for several years.

Q. Do you ever visit Las Vegas and play the slots? Have you written about gambling?

A. I do not visit Las Vegas. I don't care for gambling and am not a gambler. However, if I do want to throw away some money, there are three casinos in Mesquite where I can go. I do, sometimes, like to go to the casino for a buffet, but that is all.

Q. Do you agree with the slogan "What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas"?

A. I think the slogan is totally wrong. It denotes the wrong kind of reputation for Las Vegas. What happens in Las Vegas should be in the public domain as far as I am concerned.


Q. What are your favorite subjects in your columns?

A. The only things I write about in my columns are my life experiences and my thoughts on what is going on right now. I have had a long life and met a lot of people, famous or not, and have had a lot of experiences.


Q. Do you receive much feeedback?

A. I have received some postcards and letters but not many. However, my daughter and I are constantly getting verbal feedback from people in this town whenever we go out.

One of those people is Barb King,
http://www.mesquitelocalnews.com/viewnews.php?newsid=1804&id=6&mode=archive
who praised Margaret's and daughter Patrisha's performances in a New Year's Eve stage show a few weeks ago.

"In this play she [Margaret] was Miss Patience, and what a wonderful job she did re-creating a sweet, prim and proper school marm who had once been engaged to the sheriff.," Barb wrote. "Margaret continues to amaze everyone who meets her, with her wonderful humor and fabulous abilities with story-telling."

Margaret's columns cover a wide variety of subjects, ranging from My First Kiss
to her latest column, Hard times again — when will we ever learn? http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200990212025

She wrote My First Kiss last year, when she was only 101.. Here's a copy:

When I was young, about nine years old, there was a preacher who came to our country schoolhouse to preach.
Mama, who was very religious, always went to hear him and took me along. He almost always brought his granddaughter who was my age. On one occasion Mama gave me permission to return with them to Ackley, a small town about 15 miles away.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when we were served dinner by the wife. The preacher got a serving of a very savory roast, the rest of us half of a boiled potato, no butter, just salt, and no dessert, while he had apple pie.

I was hungry when I went to bed with his granddaughter and hungrier after being served a small bowl of gummy oatmeal for breakfast. It was at that time I began to make decisions. I took my paper bag of possessions and, after telling the minister’s wife where I was going, I left.

I went to Grandma Johnson, who was raising my dead sister’s little boy, my nephew Lyle, who is, at this time, 80 some years old and living in Yuma, Arizona. Grandma Johnson opened her arms. The rest of the week was pure joy. We went to a dance at the little town hall. Grandpa took me to the dance and then said, “You know the way home. See you later,” and left.

One of the neighbors had a boy of about 11 who danced with me and later walked me back to Grandma Johnson’s house. He was so polite. He opened the gate in the back yard fence and walked me up to the house.

I was thrilled and tongue-tied. We stood at the door staring at each other, when he suddenly grabbed and kissed me, turned and ran like the hounds of hell were after him.

I forgot to worry about getting back home; the preacher would have to take me. Gee whiz, he really kissed me! What was his name again? I couldn’t remember. The kiss on my cheek still tingled.

You can see five photos of Margaret at different stages of life posted on MySpace http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=237656927&albumId=271577

And here's an edited copy of this remarkable woman's autobiography:

I was born on February 1, 1907, in the backwoods of Minnesota on a homestead, 25 miles from Backus, which now has a population of 2,500 people, the year before Henry Ford came out with his first Model T Ford.

I have seen the history of the 20th Century; watched the boys leave for war -- World War I, that is, as well as World War II, The Korean Conflict, Vietnam, Desert Storm and Iraq. I remember the 1918-1919 flu epidemic.

Any 100 year old has done a lot of living. I think I have packed more into my lifetime than most.
I have:

o lived all over the country, from California to New York City to Richmond, Virginia,

o seen the first rocket go off at White Sands, New Mexico,

o visited Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, among other places,

o counted movie stars such as Lillian Roth, Marie Dressler, Peggy Ann Garner, Elizabeth Taylor and Wallace Beery as friends,

o started the Virginia Cerebral Palsy Association and spoken at the Virginia Health Conference on Crippled Children,

o worked as Authorization Manager for Lord and Taylor in New York City,

o made a commercial for McDonald's,

o met Grant Woods, Albert Einstein, Bill Pachner, Gustav Rehberger, Leonard Goldenson, founder of ABC, among others,

o published a successful novel and written another for the Eldred (my maiden name) family.

I am presently completing another novel about a marriage made in heaven or hell, as the case may be.

Presently I write a weekly column for a local newspaper, based on my insights and understandings of the past and present.

I'm currently putting together my own website called MemoirsOfACentenarianCrone.com

I welcome anyone who wishes to e-mail me and will answer as many as possible.

Margaret Caldwell's email address is thelivelyartsATyahoo.com (replace AT with @ and put "Margaret" in the subject line).

Supercentenarians (112) share same birthday

This story was first published by OhmyNewsInternational. To read their version, with interesting illustrations and live links, please cut and paste this address:
http://tinyurl.com/6rgzos

By a strange coincidence, Britain's oldest man, Henry Allingham, and America's oldest man, George Francis, were born on the same day - June 6, 1896. That means they are 112 years and six months old this week.

Famous in their own countries, they are little known to the rest of the world. They have never met, and are probably unaware of each other's existence.

Henry Allingham is one of only four remaining British survivors of World War 1 (1914-1918) in which nearly a million of his comrades died.

As a teenager, he enlisted with the Royal Naval Air Service as a skilled mechanic and a year later, in 1916, he was involved in the greatest naval battle of the war, the Battle of Jutland.


In 1917, he was posted to France to support the Royal Flying Corps, and helped service and rescue aircraft which had crashed behind the trenches.
In 1919, he married 22-year-old Dorothy Cater in Chingford, Essex. [In another strange coincidence, the writer of this article was born there... in 1919.]

Henry's wife died 38 years ago, while his two daughters both died in their 80s. He has five grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren. Eight of his descendants and their partners flew from their homes in the United States to join him for his 112th birthday.

A report in London's Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2086501/Henry-Allingham,-Europe's-oldest-man,-celebrates-112th-birthday.html says:

To mark Armistice Day in 2005, Mr Allingham travelled to St Omer, near Calais, France, to lay wreaths to fallen comrades.

A year later, aged 110, as the oldest British World War I veteran, Mr Allingham met his German counterpart, Robert Meier, 109.

The men greeted each other warmly and laid a wreath at the war memorial near Witten town hall.

Mr Meier said it was "amazing" that both men were still alive and went on to say: "Why did we have to have a war?"

In 2007, Mr Allingham marked his 111th birthday on board the Royal Navy's oldest warship, HMS Victory, at Portsmouth.

A military flypast of aircraft from the Royal Navy's historic flight and the RAF marked the occasion.

Henry lived in Eastbourne, East Sussex, on the south coast of England for many years, but when his eyesight began to deteriorate he moved to the nearby St Dunstan’s care home for blind ex-service personnel.

America's oldest man, George Rene Francis, lives in a nursing home in Sacramento, California. Last month he voted for Barack Obama, whose victory, he declared, “made democracy work.”

"... Francis has lived through 19 U.S. presidents and six decades of Jim Crow laws, when he and all black Americans were forced to endure racial segregation," says a report in the Sacramento Observer http://www.sacobserver.com/community/111108/george_francis.shtml

"This week, a beaming, wheelchair-bound Francis told his daughters he felt like jumping up and down after helping to elect the nation’s first black president. 'He is going to give black men a break in the world, and give them a better opportunity to live and make more money,' Francis said.’’

The report says that Francis grew up listening to Louis Armstrong play trumpet on his front porch in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward.

A lifelong Democrat, Francis cast his first ballot in the early 1930s, when he voted for Franklin Roosevelt.

In 1949, before the civil rights movement, he moved west to California seeking a better job.

His wife of four decades, Josephine, died in 1964 at age 63. But Francis’s extended family — which includes four children, 18 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren and 16 great-great grandchildren —say the man they call “Papa’’ never lost his spirit, nor his interest in politics.

An article about American supercenturians (people aged 110 and over) in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_C._White#Carrie_C._White says: "He credits his longevity to nature, and enjoys a rich diet of pork, eggs, milk and lard. He gave up smoking cigars at the age of 75."

On the other hand, according to the London Daily Mail, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7439458.stm Henry Allingham has joked that his secret to longevity is "cigarettes, whisky and wild women".


VIDEOS

Henry Allingham: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_R303aoso&NR=1

George Francis: http://www.truveo.com/Black-Centenarian-Votes-Obama/id/2342739199

FOOTNOTE. The world's oldest living person is Maria de Jesus (115) of Portugal, born on September 10, 1893. The oldest living man is 113 year-old Tomoji Tanabe of Japan, born on September 18, 1895.

POSTSCRIPT
Sadly, George Francis died on December 28. "Francis, who lived in Sacramento's Eskaton Care Center Greenhaven retirement community, passed away Sunday after being hospitalized recently for heart problems," Sacramento TV. http://www.news10.net/news/story.aspx?storyid=52493&catid=2
reported.