Lawton centenarian: ‘Just be yourself’

While walking over a mile to her country school in Fairview in the 1930s, turning 100 years old was the last thing on young Jurhee Nakowiecki’s mind.

Nakowiecki, who will turn 100 on Tuesday, was born March 26, 1924, to Joe and Annise Cannon at a farmhouse in Frederick. She remembered her life on the farm with her family, being the middle child with an older brother, Forrest, and younger brother, Warren.

Tara Stewart, a caregiver at Lawton Post Acute and Rehab where Nakowiecki lives, said Jurhee and Forrest would work the farm.

“She didn’t get a break because she was a girl,” Stewart said. “She had to work just as hard as the boys.”

“(Forrest) took care of me,” Nakowiecki said. “He had a motorcycle and I went everywhere he went on that motorcycle.”

Nakowiecki went to school 5½ miles from Frederick at Fairview Country School until eighth grade. She then went to Frederick High School.

“We had to walk to school,” Nakowiecki said. “If it had rained and the ditches were up, we had to walk down the road and walk over a mile to school. But we never thought anything about it, you just did it.”

She then went to Draughon’s Business School in Oklahoma City to study business. After she graduated, she worked at Fort Sill for 34 years as a clerk. In World War II, she drove a delivery truck for Santa Fe Freight Company.

“They all used to laugh, because, a woman driving a delivery truck,” Nakowiecki said. “You did it. Everything. You didn’t question that you did it.”

Nakowiecki was married twice and had a child, Gary, with her first husband.

Stewart said Nakowiecki volunteered at the VFW.

“(She) used to like to go and talk to those men and listen to them tell their stories,” Stewart said.

“The (VFW) was our second home,” Nakowiecki said. “That’s where everybody met up and on Saturday nights they always had a dance and they had a good band.”

Nakowiecki said there’s no comparison to the drastic change from World War II to now.

“Everything’s too modern now,” Nakowiecki said. “Back then, we didn’t go to the store, period. We grew all of our own food. We got out and work to the dark and you took care of it.”

One piece of Nakowiecki’s advice is to “just be yourself.”

“Be honest, don’t lie, just do your thing,” Nakowiecki said.