WINTHROP Town lauds Cole on 100th birthday
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BY BETTY ADAMS
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 08/09/2008

WINTHROP -- From the potato fields of Aroostook County to the bayous of Louisiana, Ruth Cole has seen much in her hundred years.

Now, with her sight dimmed by age, she stores all those sights in her memory.

Cole was honored Friday as she turned 100 years old on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year.

She also received a Boston Post Cane from Winthrop officials to indicate her status as the oldest citizen in town.

Two days before the celebration, Cole sat at a dinner table on the second floor of Heritage Rehabilitation & Living Center on Old Lewiston Road, and reminisced.

She credits her longevity to good nutrition.

"I lay it to the diet I had as a child," she said. "My father was a Seventh-day Adventist and they had the best system for a diet. They're noted for their nutrition. No pork, no coffee or tea. We had a lot of fish and a good sturdy farm diet."

Cole doesn't do well with the sturdy part now.

"I can't chew," she said, as she prepared to eat a dinner of egg salad and a slice of wheat bread and butter and wash it down with a glass of milk. "My teeth don't fit too well."

She's hard of hearing as well, having given up on a hearing aid a few years ago.

Given a choice, Cole would sup on oyster stew.

"I sure like oyster stew. I'd sure like to have some, just milk and oysters and butter. My daughter's going to bring me some tomorrow if she remembers."

Cole's favorite activity is to lay in bed and think up poems. "I make little jingles," she said, reciting the one about her roommate:

"Louise is a lovely lady, but she's a sleepy head. /We'd like to have her eat (with us) but she prefers her bed instead." The ryhmes draw a round of laughs from her fellow diners.

Cole wrote a book of 31 poems and had one appear in a religious publication, and she also wrote short stories about animals. Cole said she's particularly fond of animals.

"I had one cat and he rode on my walker," Cole said.

The only girl in her family, she and her four brothers worked in the fields each fall. "Every year they'd close the schools and we'd all go out and pick potatoes," she said.

For about two decades, she operated Ruth's Beauty Shop on Atlantic Avenue in Old Orchard Beach.

Then, once her three children were grown, she did home missionary work for a Pentecostal church and moved to various sites in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas, taking in tailoring on the side.

She earned a high school equivalency diploma when she was in her 90s. "I'm a person of all trades and master of none," she said, with a laugh.

Cole's two sons are deceased, but her daughter, Ellen Roberts, 80, of Mount Vernon visits her frequently. Cole has numerous great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.

Roberts said her mother was planning to have her hair and nails done for the big event.

"I've got the oysters," Roberts said on Thursday.

Betty Adams -- 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

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