Lehman recalls a century of living

Lola Lehman of Woodward said she doesn’t like notoriety.

But at 99 years old and with a birthday coming up on Friday, she’s willing to admit that she’s a little bit popular right now.

In the living room of her home on 26th Street, she has a stack of birthday cards from former students she worked with as a home demonstration agent for three counties in Arkansas through the University of Arkansas.

“That was my job for 37 years,” Lehman said. “I worked in four different counties. I started there May 1, 1935.”

The students who sent the cards read about her upcoming birthday in a newspaper in Arkansas, she said. A friend had put an announcement in the paper.

At the time Lehman worked with her former students, they were 13 and 14 years old, she said.

“The students were just like I was,” she said. “They were better behaved than today.”

While Lehman was building her life as a home extension agent during a time in the history of the United States when the country was suffering from the Great Depression, she had access to a car.

“We had to have a car to travel around the counties for my work,” she said. “I drove a Chevrolet. I have continued to drive Chevrolets up to my last car. It’s an Oldsmobile.”

Though she spent much of her life in Arkansas, she said, her home is Woodward.

“When I was four years old, my father was a Woodward mail carrier,” Lehman said. “We lived on the north side of Texas Avenue in the fourth block. I had two sisters, Lottie and Leone, who are no longer living. Of course, my parents, D.C. and Mary Herd, are deceased.”

From there, the Herd family moved to a homestead located about 14 miles south of Woodward.

“My father had come out here in 1898 and filed a claim on that land,” she said. “During our time on the homestead, I attended a little country school in Pleasant Valley until I was a sixth grade student.”

“My parents were interested in having us attend high school, so my father bought a farm in the Tangier area,” she said. “I attended high school in Tangier and graduated in 1927. That was just before the Great Depression, so we lived pretty sumptuously.”

Her next step in life took her to college in Alva. After about a year, she taught school for a couple of years to save her money, then went back to college -- this time at Oklahoma A&M;, which is now Oklahoma State University.

She received a bachelor’s degree in home economics.

“It took me six years to get through college, because I had to take time off to work and save my money,” she said. “I got my degree in 1932. Of course, at that time, you couldn’t get a job at anything, so I went back to teaching and taught one year at Sharon.”

Lehman said she disliked teaching. She wanted to become a home extension agent.

There were no jobs in that field available in Oklahoma at that time, so when she heard about the position in Arkansas, she took it.

It was in Arkansas where she met her husband, Clifford Lehman.

They were both 32 years old, she said, noting they married on June 30, 1940 on a Sunday morning.

When World War II began, he went oversees and was gone for four years.

“After he got home, we had to start all over again,” she said, adding they had to learn to know each other. “We decided at that time that we were too old to have children. I guess that’s just as well.

“Clifford passed away 30 years ago in 1979 of lung cancer,” she said.

Lehman said she and her husband never traveled much.

“We went to Hawaii one year for two weeks and went to St. Louis,” she said. “Neither one of us were travelers. We just pretty much stayed close to home.”

Asked about what she thought of the changes over the years on the musical scene, Lehman said she disliked rock ‘n’ roll when it came out.

What she did like was reading her Bible on Saturdays and Sundays, the time she set aside to read. She has read the Bible completely three or four times.

One of her most memorable experiences, she said, was4-H.

“As a teenager, I won awards for cooking and canning,” she said. “I attended a national meeting in Chicago in 4-H and was selected as the outstanding girl in the Northwestern part of Oklahoma.

To get to Chicago, she had to travel by train from Woodward to St. Louis, switch trains, then travel on to Chicago.

“I must have been about 17 years old,” she said.

Lehman still cooks her own food, and “I still drive,” she said.

As for her age, she says she fears she won’t wake up the next morning when she goes to bed.

“I say a prayer,” Lehman said, quoting the prayer she says each night, “Now I lay me down to sleep.”

As for living, she said, “Up until now I think the United States has been a pretty good place to live. We have enjoyed much freedom of speech and our way of life. Now, though, I wonder what we’re coming to. I heard my parents say the same thing when I was growing up.”

Thinking back, she said, I don’t think we had as much crime back then as we do now.”

While Lehman will turn 100 years old on Friday, her only health problem is high blood pressure.

Asked if she thought she would live to be 100, she said, “Oh, no. I didn’t begin to think that until the last year or so.”

She admits she doesn’t feel as good as she did when she was younger, but to take her mind off of her health, she makes quilts.

“I have no idea how many quilts I’ve made,” she said. “Probably over a hundred over the last year and a half. I sell them.”

Lehman, who was born June 5, 1909, has two nieces and a nephew, who are her only living relatives in the immediate family.

She returned to Woodward after her husband died and purchased a home with her two sisters.

“Woodward has always been home to me,” she said, “even though I lived 40 years in Arkansas. When Clifford was gone, I didn’t want to stay there anymore. This time around, I’ve been in Woodward since 1982.”

Of her accomplishments, she said that one of the things she’s proudest of is the establishment of a scholarship fund for needy students.

“Whatever I have in my estate goes to the scholarships, titled the Lola and Lottie Herd Scholarship Fund,” she said. “It’s for needy OSU students.”

“We’re blessed in heaven for helping each other, and that’s not very common these days,” she said.