Published: April 05, 2008 11:42 pm      

Allie White: 100 years in Mississippi

Tomorrow, a longtime Meridianite will mark a milestone birthday — Allie White, a devoted member of Poplar Springs Drive Baptist Church, will be 100 years old. A lot of things can happen in 100 years, but for White, one thing has remained constant. She has always lived in Mississippi.

White said she has lived in Meridian since 1939, and has been in the same house since 1949. But the first place she can remember living is her childhood home in Bailey, which was built by her father.

There was no plumbing in the turn-of-the-century country home.

"We had an outhouse," she said, "We didn't get plumbing until we moved to Meridian."

When White was 11, she had her appendix taken out right on the kitchen table in an operation by the original Dr. Rush — Dr. J.H. Rush, who founded Rush Infirmary, which would later become Rush Foundation Hospital.

"My mother polished all the lamps," White remembered. She was then put to sleep the old fashioned way — with ether — as her mother held her hand.

Though she had to do without plumbing and undergo surgery on her kitchen table, White did enjoy a limited amount of electricity in her childhood home. There was one electric light in each room, she said. Still, she had to do her studying by kerosene lamp.

Of course, with only enough electricity to fuel a few lights, White's family wouldn't have even fathomed anything like a refrigerator. Instead, they stored their milk in a well to keep it cool. The house was kept warm in winter by a pot-bellied stove, and the only relief from summer heat was "just opening the window".

White said she didn't get her first fan until the 1940s, when she would have been in her 30s.

"Boy," she said. "How did we live back then?" Then she added, "I guess people can live any sort of way."

White married in 1926, and stayed married until her husband, David, died 78 years later. In 1939, they moved to Meridian with their young son, Reginald, who White calls the greatest blessing of her life.

In the 1930s White said, "There wasn't much Meridian."

Though she joked that the main form of entertainment back then was "work" one of her favorite things about Meridian in the '30s and '40s was going to the movies, which were shown at what it now the Temple theater. She said she and her friends would walk there from 53rd Avenue, and would have to save their pennies in order to catch a bus ride back home.

In the 1950s, she entered what she said is one of the hardest times in her life, when her son went off to fight in the Korean war.

"I cried all the way home when we took him to the train," she said. "I was very glad when he came home."

After her son came home, White said he had to soak his feet for a week, because he had had to go so long without taking his shoes off.

He recovered, though, becoming a doctor and having a family of his own. White now has two grandchildren, David and Becky.

White has worked at several book-keeping jobs during her 100 years in Mississippi, including one that she said paid only $5 a week. Since 1950, she has been an active and devoted member of Poplar Springs Drive Baptist Church, as well as a devoted Republican.

Her birthday is tomorrow, but she will celebrate it today with friends and family.