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To Thelma Cunningham, age is just a number, albeit a rather large one.
Saturday, the longtime Hearne resident turned 105.
How did she do it?
"There was an old man in Tulsa," she said. "Everyone asked him to what he attributed being 100. He said, 'I just didn't die yet.' So, I'm like that man in Tulsa. I just didn't die."
But she doesn't think being 105 merits much attention and, she said, she doesn't understand why everyone is making such a fuss about her birthday.
"They told me I was on TV," she said. "I didn't even watch it."
Cunningham was born in Albany, near Abilene, in 1904.
In her 105 years, Cunningham has done a lot. She's voted in every presidential election since casting her first ballot in 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover.
She voted in the last election, too, but wasn't sure about all of the local candidates.
"I looked and I said, 'Well, I probably don't know many of these people, but I bet I knew their grandfathers,'" she said.
Cunningham has subscribed to the newspaper for 70 years and reads the obituaries and the crossword puzzle daily, she said. She stopped driving at 99.
Throughout her life, she's been known for her beauty and grace. That's still true today.
The walls of her room at St. Joseph Manor are decorated with paintings and photographs. A black-and-white portrait captures Cunningham's classical elegance as a 43-year-old.
But her favorite picture on the wall is one of the Hearne home she and her first husband built more than 75 years ago.
The home is two stories, with bright white columns across the front porch. Even from the picture, one can tell it was well-kept.
"That home is built like the Rock of Gibraltar, too," said Doug Webb, a distant cousin. "She still owns it, and her family maintains it."
Cunningham was a nurse, and her first husband was a doctor. Together they built one of the first hospitals in Hearne, she said.
"I loved that city," Cunningham said. "I always felt like I was supposed to be there; there was so much to be done."
She remembers the town as friendly, a great place to live.
"Everybody was your friend," she said. "If you had a problem, it was everyone's problem."
She was 12 years old when she realized she wanted to be a nurse and 70 when she retired.
"I really should have retired at 80," she said. "I retired too soon."
In high school, her main concern was preparing for college.
"My father and I wrote Scott & White and told them I was interested in nursing," she said. "They told me to take four years of math and science and one year of Latin in school. I did."
The advice served Cunningham well when she attended Baylor College of Medicine.
Before she retired, she went back to school at 62 to get her master's degree.
Cunningham has been widowed twice and has one daughter and two grandsons.
Her first husband died suddenly of a heart attack at 47. She remarried years later to a minister of the local Methodist church of which she had been a member since the 1930s.
He died of lung cancer after nine months of marriage, she said.
"I was married to two wonderful men," she said. "I was truly blessed."
She's done a lot of traveling in her time, too -- Russia, Italy, Sweden, Egypt and the British Isles, just to name a few.
But her true passion in life was being a nurse.
"I loved, loved my profession," she said. "The hospital was my life."
After spending so many hours in a hospital, she never visited one as a patient until she was 92, she said.
"I was on my way to a party and I missed the last step," she said. "I fell and broke my hip. But I've always been really healthy. I even have my own teeth."
Even at age 104, she was not at all shy when it came to making sure things at her home church, Grace Methodist, were on the up and up.
"She got to meet our new minister at Christmastime," Webb said. "And she wanted to make sure that he had done some things that needed to be done. He had."
Webb said a previous minister of the church called her The First Lady of Grace, because she had been a member of the church for so many years.
Now, living in Bryan, she still keeps up with how things are going in Hearne.
She'll ask Webb about the church and she'll have others check on her house.
"She's always so dedicated to whatever she does," Webb said. "While she always acts like the perfect lady, she's always had a neat spunk to her, a wit, a charm."
