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100 years of fun; resident celebrates birthday
By Kenny Green, kgreen@acnpapers.com
Monday marked a milestone for Mesquite resident Althadean Nash as she celebrated her 100th birthday.
Nash was joined at Cambridge Court Assisted Living & Memory Care by friends, family and a few honored guests including State Representative Robert Miklos and Mesquite Mayor John Monaco. The Mesquite Citizens Police Academy served cake and punch, and bluegrass music was provided by Two-R-More Band.
Rep. Miklos presented Nash with a Texas flag that flew over the capitol in her honor. Monaco was on hand to present Nash with a proclamation making it Althadean Nash Day in the city of Mesquite.
“It makes it last longer,” Nash said.
Nash recalled memories over the last 100 years, including the first time she voted.
“I remember it was real thrilling walking down with my dad. I thought I was really grown up to be able to vote. My dad was really patriotic,” Nash said.
Nash was born Jan. 18, 1910, in Beebe, Arkansas. Her parents Ollie and James Milam Wren moved to Texas in 1917.
“My dad was looking for a job, and something lured him off to West Texas. People thought we were different; we didn’t fit in to what they were used to,” Nash said. “I think [the West Texans]
though Arkansas was a foreign country and were surprised we spoke the same language.”
Nash said she remembered when she was little the family would go to town every Saturday in the wagon.
“We were just ordinary country people,” Nash said.
Nash went to school in Longview and later attended high school in Henderson. The family moved to El Dorado, Arkansas, when Nash was 17, where she attended El Dorado Business College. Nash had a sister, Edith, and two brothers, James Milam Jr. and Alvin. Nash married H. Stanley Nash in 1931. Stanley Nash was manager of Electric Bottling Company, a local 7-Up bottling plant ,until it closed in the 1970s. The couple had one daughter, Patsy. Nash was a homemaker until the 1950s when she went to work as an abstracter and a deputy county clerk for Union County, where she worked for 15 years.
The couple also owned a 100-acre tree farm.
“Every time they wanted to buy a new car, we would harvest some trees and pay cash for it,” said granddaughter Leslie Davis.
At the age of 63, Nash took up the art of china painting, and over the next 25 years turned out over 600 pieces, some of which she has in her apartment in Mesquite. She was a member of the Arkansas Federation of Porcelain Artists.
“I was just looking for a hobby when I quit working, something to be interested in,” Nash said.
According to her family members, they all have their own collection of plates painted by Althadean.
Leslie Davis recalled a few things that have always amused her about her grandmother.
“One of the main things about Althadean is that she has always had a playful spirit. When she stayed with us as kids, she was just as apt to kick off her shoes and jump on the bed as we were. I remember her sitting cross-legged on the floor playing jacks with me. I have pictures of her down on the floor playing with dolls with her great-granddaughters when she was 86,” Davis said. “She was always dressed to the nines, and we laugh about one time when our grandparents met our family for a camping trip at Tyler State Park, and Althadean got out of the car in a dress with nylons and high heeled shoes, carrying a key lime pie.”
Davis also recalled a story that she remembered the family always got a good laugh at because it was completely out of character for her grandmother.
“In El Dorado people used to raise chickens. One of her neighbors had a rooster that was always eating the heads off of her geraniums. She told the neighbors that if they did not keep the rooster away from her geraniums she was going to kill it. She came out one Sunday morning dressed for church, and there was the rooster in her geraniums. She snatched it up and broke its neck and then took it and laid it on the neighbor’s porch. For years the man next door would point at her and call her a mean woman. It was just funny to us because she is such a sweet person,” Davis said.
Althadean and Stanley were devoted churchgoers attending First Baptist Church of El Dorado which they joined in 1943. She taught the Lamplighters classes, and her husband served as a deacon. They were married for 72 years and 72 days when Stanley Nash passed away in 2003, at the age of 96. Their daughter Patsy died the same year.
Nash moved to Mesquite to live near her granddaughter, Leslie, and her husband ,Will Davis. Nash and a grandson, David Pirkey, and his wife ,Vicki, of Kingwood, Tex., and three great granddaughters, Jennifer Pirkey, Selket Davis and Aeriel Davis. Though she has outlived all of her siblings, she is loved by many nieces and nephews and their children and grandchildren. Althadean attributes her long life to having a strong faith in God, a positive attitude, a great husband, and no bad habits to mention.
“I have had a great life,” Nash said.
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