105-year-old Woman Remembers Oklahoma Before It Was A State

A woman in Oklahoma is turning 106 years old, and this great, great, great grandmother still has plenty of stories left to tell.

Saturday, November 13th 2010, 7:25 pm

By: News 9


Jacqueline Sit, News 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A woman in Oklahoma is turning 106 years old, and this great, great, great grandmother still has plenty of stories left to tell.

"When I was a little girl at two-years-old, I can still remember," said Johnnie Biles.

She's 105-years-old and she still remembers walking to school when she says "it was so cold, the horns could fall right off of a goat." At 3'10" she's small in stature but makes up for it with her big heart, sharp mind and quick tongue.

Johnnie Biles moved from Arkansas to Oklahoma with her family in a wagon.

At 11, she became an orphan after her mother passed away and her father needed help raising Johnnie and her baby brother. At 19, she married the love of her life inside a Maysville hardware store.

"The Lord has been so good to me. He's helped me in so many ways," said the centenarian.

She was born before Oklahoma even became a state and lived through the Great Depression and two world wars as a homemaker and mother of seven children.

"We have it all different today," Biles said. "Back then people didn't rely on somebody else to do for them, they done for themselves."

She is the last surviving sibling in her family and her daughter, Shirley Turner, said her mother is not letting her age get in the way of her will.

"She's a blessing to us you know and I think that's what's mainly what kept her here," said Turner.

Biles has 110 grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. She said there is no secret to her long life although she said she's happy all the time and enjoys what she has every single day.

"I want to live as long as He wants me to and that's the only answer I can give," said Biles. "I don't have anything to do with it, it was all the Lord."

Johnnie will be celebrating her 106th birthday next week and her loved ones from all across the country will be joining her.

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