|
Margaret Tannehill had planned to tell a joke at her 100th birthday celebration earlier this month with family and friends.
She decided against it at the last minute even though she stood up and thanked the more than 70 people who were there. “It really wasn’t a very good joke,” she says, “so it’s just as well.Do you want to hear it?”
“Sure,” I respond.
It seems there was a farmer and his wife who worked really hard to send their son to college, she says. When he got back home, the people in the community wanted to know if his education had made him any different.
Not really, she says he responded. He was getting along fine. The only thing was that his horses were treating him differently.
Margaret pauses to ask her son, Dr. Robert “Bob” Tannehill, who came over for the interview, if he will help her out if she gets stuck telling the joke.
“You’re doing OK,” he says.
Back to the educated man and his horses.“Instead of giddyup, he was saying proceed,” she says.
“I almost forgot the word ‘proceed,’ ” she says, laughing. “Do you think they would have laughed at that, Bob?”
Though she didn’t tell the joke, Bob, a retired pediatrician, says she did promise that for her next birthday party, she was going to memorize a poem and recite it with gestures and all. “Everybody laughed,” he says.
The birthday celebration was held at the home of her grandson and Bob’s son, Bruce, in Augusta, Ga., and was attended by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren along with other relatives and close family friends. Margaret’s neighbors across North Craige Street, J.P. and Sally Helms, drove down for the party.
Margaret rides with the Helmses to services at the First United Methodist Church of Salisbury because Bob and his family attend somewhere else. Sally also takes her shopping once a week.
“They are the best,”Bob says. “They’re family.”
Margaret says she really enjoyed the party. “I saw people I hadn’t seen in several years,” she says. “That was nice.”
She was honored on July 15, four days after her birthday on the 11th. Television personality Willard Scott, in announcing her birthday on “The Today Show,” said she still maintains her own home and is famous for her sweet rolls. Bob recorded the show and played it at her party.
Also at the celebration, Margaret was presented with a book filled with memories of various family members, favorite photos taken through the years and a timeline of significant events in her life. Titled, “The Staff of My Life, Continued,” it was the continuation of a collection of memories, recipes, photos and a family tree compiled for her seven years ago.
Margaret had another birthday celebration last month. The Salisbury Woman’s Club, since it doesn’t meet in July, turned its annual June picnic into a party for its oldest member at the home of Irmingard Von Grabe in Faith. Irmingard and her sister, Uta Braun, served an elegant meal in her honor.
Club members read their birthday cards, which were among 60-some that Margaret has received, and shared a favorite memory of her at the party.
The club also presented her with a necklace made out of 100 pennies, one for every year of her life, a Carolina wren to add to her bird collection, a coffee cup and a leather scrapbook engraved with her name and filled with mementos of her time in the club.
It was shortly after she and her husband, the late Norman Bruce Tannehill, moved to Salisbury in 1967 that she joined the club. There used to be a large membership, she says, but the membership is down to about 15.
“And we’re all getting old,” she says. “We just didn’t work hard enough getting members.”
Margaret was also a member of a local bridge club until recently, and during her years atFirst United Methodist, she has served as a Sunday school teacher, choir member and pianist for Sunday school and prayer meetings.
Her mother played the piano, Margaret says, and she took lessons as a child. She still plays and says it helps keep her fingers limber.
Though her eyes are getting bad, Margaret reads her Sunday school lesson faithfully every week. “My faith is very, very important,” she says. “I just feel sorry for somebody that doesn’t bother reading their Sunday school lessons.”
Sitting in her living room, the piano behind her, Margaret points out items with meaning to her. Displayed across the room, for example, is her collection of milk glass and antique china. “She collects everything,” Bob says.
The three Oriental pictures on the wall beside them were gifts from her cousin, a missionary in China. Margaret says she used to love to hear about her life there. The pictures, displayed in a vertical pattern, were done by her cousin’s students.
The painting of a deer on the wall above the piano was done by her nephew, and the painting on the wall across from her was done by her late brother, Henry. The woman holding the baby is her mother, she says, and the little girl admiring the baby is a depiction of Margaret looking at her baby sister, Florence.
Born in Freeport, Pa., Margaret was the first of three children born to Lyda and Henry Hild, who worked as a wheelwright building buggies and wagons for the farming community.
As a young girl, Bob says his mother loved to hike around the community by herself. It was safe to do that back then, and she went all over. “She just loved nature,” he says.
One day, when Margaret was 9 or so, she was hiking near Buffalo Creek when she got thirsty and decided to drink some of the creek water. She contracted typhoid fever and was sick for a couple of weeks.
By the time Margaret graduated from high school, World War I had started and women were needed to work in offices to replace the men in service. She saw an ad for a business school which guaranteed to find women jobs if they learned typing, shorthand and office procedures.
Margaret enrolled, and though she was among the majority of her class who never learned shorthand, she graduated and went to work for E.A. Woods Co., making $75 a month. “That was my first pay,” she says.
After working a couple of years, Margaret went to Allegheny College in Meadville for two years to earn her teaching certificate. It was there that she met Norman, who was a senior when she was a freshman. He was a preacher’s son, she says.
“Love at first sight,” Bob interjects.
Margaret taught third and fourth grades for three years before they were married on Feb. 1, 1926, and for another year afterward. When jobs became scarce during the Great Depression, they moved to Florida where her husband, an accountant, worked in a bank.
They were in St. Petersburg for about two years before Norman lost his job in a real estate bust and they moved back to the Freeport area, where they were living when Bob was born in 1928. Their second son, Joe, was born in nearby McKees Rocks in 1932.
The following year, the Tannehills and their young sons moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where a daughter, Louise, was born.
They were in Cleveland for 16 years before moving again, eventually settling in Augusta, Ga., which was their home for 16 years before Norman retired from the Department of Revenue for the State of Georgia and moved with Margaret to Salisbury.
Bob and his family had lived in the house on North Craige Street for four years, but decided they needed something bigger after the birth of their third child. When they moved out, his parents moved in and had lived there only 18 months when Norman died in 1969 at age 72.
It was only after her husband died that Margaret learned to drive. She was visiting Joe, who works as a mechanical engineer and has his own business, and his family, she says, when she took driving lessons.
She drove until around age 88, Bob says. She had an accident at a stop sign, and even though no one was hurt, he says she decided she had better not drive anymore. Her car stayed parked in her driveway until Hurricane Hugo came through, and a tree fell on it and totalled it.
Though she wears hearing aids and suffers from deteriorating eyesight, Bob says his mother has been blessed with good health. She never drank or smoked, he says, and has always been active.
“She used to walk a lot,” he says. “A lot of times, she’d run instead of walk. If she was going someplace, she’d trot.”
And of course, he says, being a mother and housewife kept her on the go.
Margaret continues to stay busy, working in her flowers on the patio behind her house. “Plants are my hobby,” she says.“The basement is half full in the winter when I bring them all in.”
The charming patio, recreated beautifully in a painting by her granddaughter, stays shaded by the flowering trees that surround it. “I spend a lot of time out here,” she says.
Though she loves all flowers, Margaret says roses would have to be her favorite. She is a member of the Rowan Rose Society, she says, and had 15 rosebushes at one time.
Looking back on her life, she says she’s very proud of Bob, Joe, who lives in Panama City, Fla., and Louise, who lives in Memphis and recently retired from her office job. Margarethas 10 grandchildren and 13 great-grand-children.
As for turning 100, she says she considers herself very, very fortunate to have lived so long. “First and foremost,” she says when asked about her longevity, “I love life.”
|
Today's News