How life used to be, shown by 109 year old lady

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080107/NEWS01/801070332/1007/NEWS01

109-year-old Arkansas woman dies
The Associated Press
Fayetteville, Ark. — One of Arkansas' oldest residents has died. Pearl H. Spyres died Wednesday at her home in Fayetteville, her family said. She was 109.

Born Pearl Harp in 1898 to a West Fork farm family, she began work as a teacher when she was just 17. Early in her career, she rode her horse to a one-room schoolhouse in Washington County to teach every day. Spyres taught reading, writing and arithmetic to students in grades one through eight.

"I only saw her paddle one student in the four years she taught me," said former student Lloyd Warren, 92. "She wasn't a person who was harsh, even though she was a very young lady. She had a character and personality that commanded respect."

Every other semester, Spyres took courses at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville to get her teaching certificate. There, she met her future husband, Sherman W. "Buck" Spyres. The couple married in 1924. Buck Spyres died in the late 1970s.

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Is this so amazingly cool? This lady was born in the last few years of the 1800's. She taught in a one room school house at the age of 17 that she reached by riding her horse. A 92 year old man is able to reminisce about her as he was one of her pupils! And she was married for well over fifty years.