“If you sit down and quit, then that’s it.”
– Jackie Drake, on her 100th birthday, June 2, 2026
“Keep movin’ – don’t sit down.”
It’s a lesson Jackie Drake put to regular use back when she and her husband, Paul, ran Gladewater’s Ben Franklin Retail Store.
Granted, that was the better part of 50 years ago.
“We had our business here for 12 years. I was on the floor running every day,” says Drake, a newly-minted centenarian after celebrating her 100th birthday June 2. Way back when as now, there’s always some good way to stay in motion. “For years I was dancing all the time.
“If you sit down and quit, then that’s it.”
Drake’s a native of Solomon, Kansas, but Gladewater’s been ‘home’ for decades. One of seven children born into a musical family, she taught dancing at the USO at age 17 (that would be 1943), married her husband in 1949 and spent six years in Paris while he was stationed in France.
Paul retired from the Air Force in October ’63. The next year, the Drake’s son, Steve, started high school while Jackie marked 1964 by joining the chancel choir at First Methodist Church Gladewater.
Later, she taught aerobics for the congregation and, much later (in 2026) Jackie was fêted there with a century celebration May 31.
She hasn’t bought into the smartphone trend, but Jackie does hold her own in the 21st century with a flip phone. She passes her days with crochet and knitting and loves music, especially her old phonograph records and “the golden oldies.”
She keeps movin’ – albeit at a measured pace.
“I’m not out chasin’ around much at all,” Jackie quips. “I worked all those years… When you’re 100 years-old you stay at home where you’re comfortable.”
She’s a big reader, too, and spent her actual birthday diving into a fresh copy of “The Trial of Lizzie Borden,” her centennial treat from Steve.
“I love crossword puzzles. That helps keep your little brain cells going,” Jackie says.
Hard times pass, she accepts, and life goes on.
Try not to make too much trouble for yourself, Jackie adds.
“When I was young, everything was so different from what it was now,” with the Great Depression, World War II, rationing and so much more that followed. She went to work for a shoe store right out of high school and well remembers the leather coupons customers had to exchange to get their shoes: “That was the law. It was interesting.”
She loves to travel, but those days are passed now. If there’s anything she’s learned in a century, it’s that times change – Jackie’s content to cherish the past and welcome the new.
“I take it one day at a time.”