Daviess County Nursing and Rehab is throwing a birthday party for Roberta Gillette at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 23, at the care center located west of Gallatin on Business Highway 6.
This website brought to you in part by the following sponsor:
Roberta is living at home now with the help of two young ladies Lisa Maenhoudt and Carla Mason, who are also employed as CNAs at the center. Roberta was briefly a resident at the center last winter.
Roberta (Dawson) Gillette was born on Aug. 23 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.
She graduated from Jamesport High School in 1927. She met John "J. Fern" Gillette when she was a junior in school.
Roberta and Fern got married on July 26, 1927. They moved one mile south of #1 Pilot Grove Church. Fern was a farmer and had a lot of livestock. They went to the Methodist Church.
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. Emma Lou’s 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.
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 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."