AP News, December 8th, 2006
At 109 years old, Ruth Lincoln can recall such events as the first flight at Kitty Hawk and the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.
"So many wonderful things have happened in my lifetime," she said Thursday during a speaking engagement at the University of Arkansas. "In fact, almost everything has happened in my lifetime."
Lincoln, the grandmother-in-law of U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., is believed to be the oldest living Arkansan.
She was born Sept. 30, 1897, in a log cabin on her family's farm about 10 miles east of Oklahoma City _ 10 years before Oklahoma was granted statehood. Her father had bought the 160-acre farm for $10.
As a girl, she attended classes at a nearby schoolhouse, but had to ride with her father in the family's buggy into Oklahoma City for high school, she said. Her father would drop her off on Monday and pick her up the following Friday. She stayed with classmates during the week, she said.
Lincoln graduated from Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State University, with a degree in Home Economics in 1919.
"There were a lot more men than women (at the university)," Lincoln said. "They had engineering and agriculture and all sorts of things for men. There was just one girl's dormitory."
In 1920, she voted for Democrat James Cox in the first presidential election in which women were allowed to vote. Republican Warren G. Harding won the race.
Speaking on the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Lincoln recalled that she and her husband heard news of the attack on a gas station radio while out for a Sunday afternoon drive.
"The world has changed," Lincoln said. "It's never been the same since."
Though her eyesight is failing because of macular degeneration, Lincoln has no other health problems. Friends read her the newspaper every day, she said.
The centenarian offered some advice to today's world leaders about ending the war in Iraq.
"More diplomacy," she said. "Talk it out and try to see the other fella's viewpoint."
