PRESCOTT, Ariz.—A kindergarten teacher at Washington Traditional School got a special visitor to help celebrate the 100th day of school with her class: a former student who’s also a centenarian.
The school called an assisted living facility in the city ” looking for a country girl, and I’m a country girl,” Florence Wells told the Daily Courier. She said she had attended fifth grade at Washington Elementary.
Wells was born in Colorado; when she was 10 and her sister was 12, her grandmother put them on a train and sent them to their mother in Kirkland, Colo.
Wells’ daughter, Beverly Suter, said Wells’ mother met the two with horses, donkeys and wagons. They traveled south of Wagner to Tussock Springs, where the family lived in tent houses that had canvas walls and wood floors.
Wells told the students that when she was a little girl, her mother raised chickens and lambs.
“We had a wood stove, and when the chickens would hatch, my mom would bring them in the house and put them behind the stove to keep them warm,” she said. “I remember running around in my nightgown, pulling it up and then covering the chicks with it.”
She also recalled riding a horse to pick up her sister from school. Wells said the horse would only “go so far and then return to the barn. I would go back just bawling.”
After her year at Washington, Wells attended school in Kirkland—the same school where her granddaughter now teaches.
“I didn’t really like going to school. I was a regular tomboy. I liked to climb the cottonwood trees and up into the hayloft,” she said.
Suter said her mother was the postmaster at Wikiup for 24 years, and that before moving there, her parents ran the Kirkland General Store.
Wells said she and her husband bought property in Wikiup and the town needed a postmaster.
“They gave me and a man—he had been a soldier—a test. I didn’t do very good on the test, but they asked people who they wanted, and they chose me,” Wells said.
Suter told the students her mother also performed riveting work at Luke Air Force Base during World War II.
As part of the 100-day celebration, Washington students drew pictures of what they thought they would look like when they were 100 years old.
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Information from: The Daily Courier,
