Frank Haight: A ‘blessing to people’ at age 100

“Today is a great day in my life. Today I became 100 years of age,” Iva England Hughes wrote in her  journal dated, May 25, 2012.

Writing with an arthritic hand, Iva noted in her beautifully penned journal that 11 family members “honored her in a great way” by taking her out to dinner and showering her with cards, flowers and gifts.

“They honored me in a great way by doing that,” Iva says of the birthday well-wishers. All were named and their gifts noted.

Sitting in an easy chair in the living room of her Independence home, where she lives alone, Iva writes in her journal whatever is on her keen mind, whenever she feels like it – something she’s been doing for years.

“I’ve got three others just like it,” she quips, as she clutches her journal in her hand and informs me she is going to log my visit in her journal. “You will go right in there today” – May 23.

Several times during pauses in her birthday interview, Iva revealed things about herself without being asked.

“I’ll tell you what I am most thankful for – my mind. I keep up with the news in the newspapers, on the TV. I have my mind and that’s what I am happy about.”

To keep her mind sharp and alert, Iva faithfully works the crossword puzzles in The Examiner. And she regularly watches CNN to keep current on world events.

“I can tell you about Muammar Gaddafi. l can tell you about the things happening all over the word, and some of these people who say (the world) is going to end in 2012, I don’t think they know.”

What Iva does know is that her aspiration as a little girl growing up in Oklahoma was to be a good musician.

“I always loved music,” she says, recalling she played the French horn in the Picher (Okla.) High School band and became an accomplished pianist and organist. “To me, the love of my life was music. That was one thing I always loved.”

Her love of music was so profound that as a teenager she walked from her home in Picher to Joplin, Mo., for piano lessons.

Asked how often she walked across the state line to Joplin, she laughingly replies, “Often enough.”

“Probably once a month,” interjects her son, George England, who with his wife, Beverly, were with Iva.

Her biggest high school highlight, she says, was meeting one of America’s most renowned composers and band directors.

“I distinctly remember playing one time in a band under the direction of John Philip Sousa. That’s all I remember.”

Another high school highlight was delivering the commencement address for the Class of 1931. Later that year, the ultimate highlight of her life – at that time  – was her marriage to Virgil England, a half Cherokee Indian, who retired to Independence in 1962 and worked as a Linotype operator at The Examiner. His son, George, also worked there for a while.

“I grew up among the Indians,” Iva recalls, in the Oklahoma cities of Picher, Pryor and Chilocco, just north of Ponca City. But it was at the Chilocco Indian School that Ivy found her greatest joy as a teacher from 1946 to 1962. She and Virgil lived on the campus.

When she first came to work at the large Indian school in 1944, she was secretary to the superintendent. However, two years later, she became a printing instructor at the school, operated by the Department of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.

George, believes his mother had a positive influence on a lot of people during her 18-year stint at Chilocco, especially the students; she also was very close to members of her husband’s family.

What she learned from the Indian people, George says, were how patient they were and how they helped each other out.

Following her husband’s death in 1972, Iva was married 18 years to Ocie Hughes, an Atherton farmer and RLDS church pastor, whom she met while employed at the RLDS Auditorium in Independence.

As Iva reminisced about growing up in Oklahoma, she recalls there were no telephones and electricity during her early years. Candles and coal-oil lamps were the major sources of light. The first phone she remembers seeing was operated with a crank.

“If you wanted to get this person,  you would crank once; if you wanted to get another person, two cranks,” she explains.

Guided by the Golden Rule, Iva believes she’s made a big difference during her lifetime.

“I‘m not bragging, but people tell me that I am a joy to be around. They say I am a blessing to them by the way I live and what I do. And that is what I want to be: a blessing and a help to other people.”

Is there anything Iva would do differently if she could relive her life?

“... No, I just want to continue doing what I have always done – being a blessing to people. That would be a good thing,” she says, then adds: “If I had to live my life over, I would still want to be a blessing to other people and do good. That would be my desire.”

And what’s her secret for a long life? Iva doesn’t have one. But she did say: “Evidently, it wasn’t my time to go.”

Is Iva excited about being a centenarian? You bet she is! She’s elated about the congratulatory greetings she has received from President Barrack Obama and former presidents William Clinton, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, as well as birthday greetings from NBC.

As for her future, Iva can only guess. But she hopes that when she leaves this Earth, she won’t be flying around with wings in the other world doing nothing.

Admitting to having a servant’s heart, Ivy hopes she can spend eternity keeping busy and doing good deeds.

A belated happy birthday, Iva. Thanks for making this a better world by doing what you do best – being a blessing to all mankind.

Keep up the good work.