Senior reaches 100-year mark, lives with husband of 78 years

November 06, 2007 06:01 pm

— AVON — The majority of people don’t reach their 100th birthdays, let alone celebrate 78 years of marriage, but James and Opal Frazier have both reached that milestone.
James was born Aug. 14, 1906, having lived 101 years, and Opal celebrated her 100th birthday with a party thrown in her honor Sunday. She was born Nov. 3, 1907.
Both were born the third child. Opal is one of 10 children, and James is one of eight, and both have their youngest sisters still surviving. She was born to Robert “Teed” and Cora (McCloud) Stewart, and he is a son of McDaniel and Hannah (Reed) Frazier.
They both live at The Villages of Avon senior facility. She has been there for six years, and James made the transition in June, and had lived at their farm in New Ross until then.
The two met in 1925 at a band concert in North Salem, where a wagon hooked up to a team of horses would carry a local country band around on Saturday nights to provide entertainment.
They were married on Sept. 26, 1929, at the Danville Courthouse by a justice of the peace. After their marriage, James got a job working on the Rock Branch Farm, south of North Salem, for a man named Crit Clay. He was responsible for repairing the house they were to live in, and he replaced the floors while Opal wallpapered the house, including the ceilings, which is what people did in that era.
James and one other man cared for and fed 100 heads of cattle on the farm. He made $7 a week until the Great Depression, when his pay was decreased to $6 a week. He and Opal were given four 200-pound hogs a year for food, which they salted and smoked to keep from spoiling. They had 200 chickens, from which Opal kept the eggs while slaughtering others for food. They also had two cows for milk and lard to use for shortening.
In that day, James remembered a loaf of bread costing 18 cents. Their eldest daughter, Pat Woodrum, said she and one of her sisters were born on that farm.
The couple moved to their New Ross home in 1939, where James farmed with hogs, milk cows, corn, and soybeans.
Opal cared for chickens and their eggs. She had a route that she traveled two or three times a week, selling dozens of eggs and pounds of homemade butter for 50 cents each, as well as milk and cream at a creamery in Crawfordsville.
“That was the only income she could call hers,” Woodrum said.
Opal didn’t drive, either. Woodrum said she once learned to drive, but got in one small accident that didn’t cause any damage, but never drove again after it, making her completely dependent on James for transportation.
The couple seldom left the house, usually only to visit their parents’ homes or to go to the Jamestown Church, where they were members for many years. They never went out to eat at restaurants, and didn’t have electricity until the early 1940s, because it was available out in the country much later than it was in larger cities.
The couple remembers attending picnics in New Maysville, a community southwest of North Salem, where many of the local churches gathered.
Opal enjoyed playing the card game Rook, and sewed much of her children’s clothing on a pedal sewing machine. She also made a lot of candy and baked cakes, including a special burnt brown sugar cake. She was known for her cornbread recipe, which she never wrote down and her children would like for her to be able to remember.
James liked to hunt squirrels and rabbits, which Opal prepared for meals.
Chores that seem easy now were much more complex in the Fraziers’ earlier days.
When James started farming, he used a horse-drawn plow rather than a tractor. His days began at 4 a.m., when he used a kerosene lantern to go to the cattle barn.
Their water came from a ravine, which they walked to get in buckets, and heated it on their wood-burning stove’s reservoir.
Opal washed clothes by hand on a washboard until she got a Maytag washer with a gasoline engine on their New Ross Farm. Their family took baths once a week on Saturday nights with water heated on the stove, and used rainwater to wash their hair.
Schooling was also different when James and Opal were small. They both attended a one-room schoolhouse, and rather than being picked up by a school bus, they rode on a “school hack.” It was a horse-drawn wagon that some children had to ride for many miles. During the winter, heated bricks were covered in cloths to provide warmth.
Opal completed the eighth grade, and James’ father got permission to take him out of school in the fourth grade to help the family by cutting wood to sell for $2 a rick. Woodrum said she has a picture of her father in the first grade in front of his schoolhouse, which is still standing today.
Opal remembers going to the McCloud Park when she was a child, and swinging on grapevines there. Her mother’s maiden name is McCloud, so she is related to the family it’s named after somewhere along the line.
Woodrum said her mother was known to be somewhat ornery as a child. She said Opal would aggravate her sisters when they were using the outdoor restroom facilities, called the privy.
The two have lived a happy life together, with a good marriage. Woodrum said the reason she believes they have both lived so long is because of their good attitude and positive outlook.
“Whatever has come his way, he has accepted it,” she said about James. “They’ve had a happy marriage.”
The couple’s family takes turns coming visiting them once or twice a day, helping them eat and taking care of them the way they did at home, and have made many friends themselves at the facility.
They have five children, Marge Stultz, Patty Woodrum, Joyce Thomas, Ron Frazier, and Ted Frazier. They also have nine grandchildren and many great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
lindsay.jones@flyergroup.com

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