Viola Stroube turned 105 Thursday at St. Paul's Home in Belleville with a large cake, a card from President Bush and some advice to fellow residents.
"Do the best you can," she said at her party.
She always has. Viola was born in Fries, Va., in 1903. She always said the town was pronounced fries in the summertime and freeze in the wintertime.
The family soon moved to Murphysboro with her father who became a Methodist minister. That meant the family moved every two years after that, all over Southern Illinois.
She attended Southern Illinois Normal College in Carbondale and got her teaching certificate. Her first job was in Joppa, but she also taught elementary school in Metropolis and later in Ashley and Centralia.
She married C.K. Stroube who was an entomologist. He died in 1967. The couple didn't have children but Viola is attended by a nephew, Bill Basden of Wood River and his wife Gloria, and a great niece, Carol Peel of Belleville and her husband Don.
Don Peel said Viola was an adventuresome woman who loved to travel. She also was a state champion skeet shooter at one time.
"She and a friend would take classes at Northwestern University in the summers," Don Peel said. "She was one of first women in the state to obtain a supervisory certificate."
Viola and her husband saw the 1939 World's Fair in New York and she is proud of having visited all 50 state capitols. Despite that, she said her favorite probably is the nation's capitol.
Viola was 95 when she quit driving. She walked to the license bureau to tell them, Peel said. She lived in an assisted living apartment until this spring.
"She fell in the closet," Peel said. "She said she couldn't reach the emergency cord and she was wondering what to do. Finally she crawled over to her bed. She said, 'I thought, I haven't done this in more than 100 years.'"
Viola moved into St. Paul's in May of this year. She has some hearing loss but still converses and is in relatively good health. She also celebrated Wednesday night by going out to dinner with her relatives.
Last year at age 104, her relatives were wondering what to do with cake decoration from the celebration.
"She said, 'Save it until next year," said niece Gloria Basden.
Wally Spiers' column runs five days a week. Have a column idea? Call Wally at 239-2506 or (800) 642-3878; or e-mail: wspiers@bnd.com
