Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2001 18:02:26 EDT

From: GVRICHARDS (at) aol.com

To: ARHEMPST-L@rootsweb.com



Subject: Retired teacher readies for 107th birthday



Kathryn "Kath" Tarply Franks will celebrate her 107th birthday Aug. 20. 



She saw the advent of automobiles, telephones and electric lights, but her farm family of two

parents and four children was so poor they couldn't afford any of them.



She didn't own an automobile until after she married, but Kathryn "Kath" Tarply Franks, who

celebrates her 107th birthday on Aug. 20, has seen it all.



"There was no indoor plumbing, no running water, no electric lights, no air conditioning, no

electric or gas stoves," she said. "I attended a one-room school with all the classes in the same

room and one teacher. In those years you only went through the 10th grade, and I started

teaching when I was 16."



Born and raised with her two brothers and one sister on small farms near Delight, Ark., and later

Amity, Ark., she pretty much stayed in the area teaching--at Hollywood, Gurdon, Grasonia and

Donaldson, all small farming communities in Southwest Arkansas.



By those years' standards, she was an "old maid schoolteacher," not marrying until 1926 when she

was 31.



Her daughter, Norma Bryant of Texarkana, Ark., herself a retired schoolteacher of 31 years, said

her mother "had lots and lots of boyfriends during her schoolteaching years, but nobody could tie

her down."



"I remember daddy telling us kids, "I caught your mother between boyfriends,'" Bryant said.

"Mother retired from teaching when she married our dad, Clifford, and started raising me and my

brother Charles Clifford, who today lives in Russellville, Ark."



The couple settled down in Hope, Ark., and Franks lived in the same house for the next 65 years.

After her husband died in May 1998, Bryant convinced her mother that moving into a nursing

home in Texarkana was not only logical but the best thing she could do.



She said her mother's life at Texarkana Nursing Center has been "wonderful for her."



"She had colon surgery in 1994, but other than that and her touch of arthritis and her poor

hearing, she's in terrific shape," her daughter said. "She has always stayed as active as she could."



Like most women in the 1920s and 30s, Franks learned how to cook, sew, crochet, quilt and

embroider. She made all her daughter's dresses, including her evening dresses. Her daughter said

her mother's afghans are "all over the state of Arkansas."



When Bryant went to college, Franks promptly found a job in a local dress shop in Hope. When

that dress shop went out of business, she started working for another dress shop. She eventually

found a job with a trading stamp store called The Gold Bond Store, which was above a hardware

store that her husband worked in. Both worked past the usual retirement age, into their 70s.



Franks has five grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren.