F E AT U R E S
FOREVER YOUNG Kathleen Hooper celebrated the 101st birthday of her remarkable life on March 17. The middle child born to Elbert and Mamie Capes, she has outlived 10 siblings, married twice, reveled in motherhood, nurtured grandchildren, held great-grandchildren, attended an Atlanta premiere for “Gone with the Wind” and witnessed 19 United States presidencies. by KARI APTED Kathleen Capes Hooper turned 101 years old on March 17—or so the story goes. She might actually be a whole year older. Born at home to Elbert and Mamie Capes on the family’s sprawling Newton County dairy farm, there was no official documentation of her arrival. As was customary at the time, the attending midwife simply wrote the date in the family’s Bible. Hooper’s older sister insisted she was 5 years old when Kathleen was born and that the midwife recorded the wrong year. If so, that would make Hooper 102. Regardless of her numerical age, Hooper has lived through an entire century of history. Woodrow Wilson was President and World War I was still a fresh memory when she was born in 1920. The average income was just over $2,000 per year. It cost two cents to mail a letter, and gasoline was 33 cents per gallon. However, the cost of gas did not matter so much, because at the time, no one in the little Oak Hill community even owned a gas-powered vehicle.
6 The Newton
Hooper has outlived 10 siblings—five brothers and four sisters—with her last remaining sister Sara having died on Mother’s Day at the age of 94. Hooper was a middle child, and as was often the case in that era, she had two additional siblings that died before she knew them. One died from pneumonia as an infant, and an older brother died of appendicitis at age 18 before Hooper was born. Kathleen and her siblings caught the bus each day to Livingston School, which housed all grades, from elementary through high school, in one building. Before and after school, each Capes child had to milk three cows and do a variety of other chores on the farm. Some of the children ended up leaving school to work, but Hooper decided she wanted to graduate. “My daddy wouldn’t let any of us girls date,” Hooper said. “He said that [we] could start after high school. Well, none of my older sisters would defy daddy and date anyway. Then my prom came around and he wasn’t going to let me go, but I said I was going to go anyhow—and I did.” When it was time to buy her senior ring, her father agreed to pay the $12 for it, but only after he made her pick a huge basket of turnip greens. Since they always had a big garden, Hooper never remembers a time that food felt scarce. However, that was not true for many people in the 1930s.
