Planes, trains and automobiles — Roberta Gillette turns 100, remembers the beginning of it all

Roberta (Dawson) was born in 1909 at Edinburg on a farm. Her father was Lonel "Bud" and her mother was Carrie (Hughes) Dawson. Her father was a school teacher until his health failed. After he recovered, he farmed. Her mother was a homemaker.

Roberta attended a one-room school called McClung for a few years while her family lived on a farm west of Jamesport. In 1925, they moved to a farm northwest of Jamesport.

"I remember the first car I ever saw," said Roberta. "It belonged to a doctor in Jamesport. Dr. McKinley, or something like that. My sister Marie and I liked to see that red car come up the road. I was about four years old."

She graduated from Jamesport High School in 1927. She met John "J. Fern" Gillette when she was a junior in school.

"I took my first airplane ride in 1925. A man came to Trenton with an old two-seater. He was a barnstormer. Fern and I were on a date and took a ride in that airplane. We were double dating with Hubert Price and Velma Wynne. After us, they took a ride."

Roberta and Fern got married on July 26, 1927. They moved one mile south of #1 Pilot Grove. Fern was a farmer and had a lot of livestock. They went to the Methodist Church. During their marriage, Fern and Roberta traveled to Idaho, Nevada, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania, and all of Missouri’s bordering states.

They had two daughters. Their daughter Mary Marie was killed in a car/motorcycle accident when she was just 20. Their daughter Emma Lou Allee lives in Waco, Texas. Her husband Robert Joe Allee is a retired army colonel who served in Korea and Vietnam. There is one grandson, John Robert Allee of Kansas City. He has two sons, James and Andrew. There is one granddaughter, Linda Brickey of Waco, Texas. She has two daughters, Carrie and Courtney.

"I’ve lived through two world wars and the Great Depression," said Roberta. "We never had a radio until 1930, when they became popular. I saw my first TV in the early 1950s. My parents had a telephone when I was just a child. I’ve seen the start of a lot of things. It would take two or three pages to tell it all."

She recalls that when she was small, she and her family could catch a train at 6:30 in the morning at Gilman City and take it to Trenton to do their trading and come back west at 3 p.m.

The first car her father owned was an old Ford Model T. Fern always had a pickup. She and Fern owned a Pontiac car, a Ford, back to Pontiac, and wound up with a Buick.

"I still have the Buick," Roberta said. "It’s in good condition. I drove it up until a year ago. I reckon, it would be called a clunker."

Roberta and Fern moved to Gallatin in 1981 where she has had "wonderful friends and neighbors." She lost Fern to cancer in 1998. They were married for 70 years.

Roberta says she has always been in pretty good health except when she was diagnosed with aplastic anemia in 1959 and was in KU Medical Center on and off for months. Finally her family doctor, Dr. Wilson, smiled and told her, "You’re on your own."

"I made a comeback," she said. "And here I am."

She has had some problems with her back and uses a walker, but her eyesight and hearing are good and her mind is still sharp. She gets meals-on-wheels delivered to her. Elizabeth McNeely helps her to stay in her home. A grandson and his wife come up about every week.

"I’m doing pretty good to be so old," she said. She has two cats, Kitty, a yellow cat, and Snoopy, a black cat.

Asked about her best memories, Roberta says, "There were so many." But some of her best memories are of the family reunions. She just had one sister, Marie Ware, a school teacher. Her father was from a big family and every year they all got together. Marie died in August of 2005. "I’m the last leaf on my family tree," Roberta said.

Roberta says that in over 100 years the country is bound to have progress and move along. But she remembers when things moved a lot slower.

"Times have sure changed," she said. "When I was young everybody helped everyone else. Nowadays young people are so busy and their mom and dad are both working."

Roberta doesn’t know what to credit for living a century.

"I take one day at a time," she said. "And try to be as happy as I can be."