Conway woman marks 100th birthday

As Velma Dunlap of Conway looks back over a century of life, hard times and tragedies stand out starkly. However, when she considers how she lived 100 years, she believes a positive attitude was an important aspect.

Dunlap was born Nov. 21, 1908, in Heyes, S.D. When she was six years old, the family moved to Iowa. When World War I started, her father moved the family west to Washington so he could get work at a shipyard. She was 10 years old when the first tragedy struck.

One day her school closed because of an influenza outbreak. Her whole family ended up sick in the hospital. One day, a nurse told her that her mother, brother and sister had died. The war ended while the family was in the hospital, she said.

Her father wrote to his father asking him to send money. The family returned to Iowa, and Dunlap's father sent the four surviving children to live with three different aunts, she said. He went to find work and earned enough money to start a store. He later gathered the children back together.

Dunlap married a man named Paul Blake at age 15 and had a son at age 16. By the time World War II arrived, her son, George, was grown, and she bragged about him to her friends at a plant where she worked making parts for airplanes. One of the girls began corresponding with George, and they married when he was 21. The day they were married, George, a lieutenant in the Air Corps, was killed in an aircraft accident, Dunlap said. She still becomes emotional when speaking of his unexpected death.

"Every year since George died, I've gotten a birthday card and a Christmas card from that little girl, except this year," she said. Dunlap surmised George's wife must have by now passed away herself.

Her daughter, Regina, was four years younger than George. She lived until just two years ago. In one of her photo albums, Dunlap had written she wanted her daughter to have the album when she was gone. She never expected to outlive her daughter.

About 1962, Dunlap married her second husband, Earl Dunlap. They were married 32 years. He died in 1994. They moved to Conway together in 1985.

Dunlap has gained some wisdom from her years of experience.

"I don't believe in credit cards. I pay cash for everything," she said.

She has seen plenty of changes in her time as well. She remembers living in a house heated by a wood stove, wearing long underwear to keep warm and walking a mile to school in the snow to a one-room school house.

Regarding the current economic climate, Dunlap remembers some aspects of the Great Depression.

"We couldn't get coffee or sugar or anything like that. "No gasoline or rubber tires," Dunlap said. "You had to patch the tires."

Asked how she believes she has lived to be 100, she said, "I don't smoke. I only drink socially. I'm a positive thinker. I believe 100 percent in God."

Although she has four grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren, only two grandchildren live nearby in Little Rock. The next closest two are in Russellville.

"I am lonely, because some days I don't see anybody," she said.

However, as she looks back over certain hard days in her life, the days she does not wish to share, she remembers putting on a smart outfit and a brave face and doing what had to be done.

"I'm the kind of person I don't let things conquer me," she said.

On Friday night, Dunlap celebrated her 100th birthday with friends and family members at Peace Lutheran Church, where she is a member.

(Staff writer Rachel Parker Dickerson can be reached by e-mail at rachel.dickerson@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1277. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)