100 ... and counting

She was born the daughter of Arkansas sharecroppers, one of two surviving triplets and the 10th of 11 children. Her family moved to Saginaw, Texas, when she was 8 and since then she’s not lived more than two miles from the town north of Fort Worth.

Not in the past 92 years.



Do not think, however, that Beulah Cole has been idling through her 100 years.

“Mother was always adventurous and the positive one in the family,” says her son, Joe Cole. “She encouraged my dad to take us on vacations all over the Western U.S. Mother loved to fish and has climbed mountains in Colorado and fished in the Gulf of Mexico and fished for grayling in the Snake River in Wyoming.”

She’s still active, he says. She bought her latest home when she was 90 years old and she still lives there. She goes to the beauty shop every Tuesday, he says, stressing the word “every,” and has her hair “fixed” by Edna Ruth, who’s been doing it about 30 years. Each week, Mrs. Cole visits the Saginaw Senior Citizens Center to play bingo.

She’s always loved baseball and recalls listening to the legendary ’27 Yankees as a teen-ager. When the Washington Senators moved to the Dallas / Fort Worth area and became the Texas Rangers in 1972, she became an avid Rangers fan.

“Mother has always loved getting birthday cards,” Joe says, “so a couple of months ago I got the idea of telling the people I went to high school with about her birthday, so they started sending her birthday cards.”

That went over so well, he expanded the field, “contacting everybody I knew.”

By the time Mrs. Cole marked her 100th birthday at the end of March, there were cards from bank presidents, journalists, lawyers, ranchers and various people of note, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Spreading the love

A couple of musicians were in the mix, including Roger McGuinn, legendary lead singer and lead guitarist for The Byrds, and Rodger Brownlee, a guy who attended school with Joe and who “was front man for a fairly famous garage band from the ’60s called The Elite.”

One of Joe’s former co-workers, Jed Stockton, currently lives and works on the Big Island of Hawaii and he sent a card. She said it’s the first card she’s ever received from the 50th state.

Of course, sports figured into the celebration, beginning with a card and gift from the Dallas Cowboys. Then she received a card and letter from Texas baseball icon Nolan Ryan. Joe says he was impressed that Ryan took time to write such a nice letter.

One birthday greeting came in person.

Glen Bird, four-time bull riding champion and two-time all-around champion cowboy in the International Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, as well as a pending inductee into the Texas Rodeo Cowboys Hall of Fame, visited Mrs. Cole in her home last weekend.

One cost of a long life is seeing so many others pass on before you. She lost her husband of 46 years in 1980 and has even lost one son, not to mention all of her siblings and most of her nieces and nephews.

“One time Mother said to me, ‘I wonder why I'm still alive and they're all dead,’” Joe says. “I told Mother, ‘Because you aren't done yet.’”
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To add your birthday greetings for Beulah Cole, click on "Post a Comment" below. Joe and I will make sure they all get to her.