“First thing you ought to let your children know is that you love them,” said Arkie Neal Remley, who turns 100 years old today. “You got your battle about whipped when you do that.”
Remley, who was an elementary school teacher for almost 40 years, will celebrate the century mark today at Third Baptist Church of Malvern — where she has been an active member since she and her husband moved there in 1939.
“Life is a beautiful journey, and I am thankful and happy for the many wonderful years I have been able to enjoy with family and friends,” Remley said in a statement.
Malvern Mayor Brenda J. Weldon will be in attendance today to present Remley with a proclamation declaring today Arkie Neal Remley Day.
“I’ve known Ms. Remley a lot of years,” Weldon said. “She is an exceptional lady, and she is doing really well for her age.
“I mean she is an inspiration for all of us for doing so well and being independent. Being able to can green beans at 100 — that’s pretty special. I just wish her the very best on her 100th birthday.”
Remley worked for 34 years in education, with the majority of it at Fields Elementary School in Malvern, which closed in 2004.
“I enjoyed the kids, and I just loved them,” Remley said. “I still run into them all the time. I hope to see some of them on Sunday.”
She said she taught first grade for most of the time, but did teach fifth grade for the last 10 years of her career.
“Both of them were perfect,” Remley said.
She said the biggest change she has seen in education has been the increase in salaries.
“It has been such a blessing, and they have a nice retirement, so I don’t have to worry about much.”
Her husband, Emerson Darrow Remley, died 25 years ago from prostate cancer. She met him after she accepted a teaching job in Stuttgart.
“I was teaching at home near Lonsdale, and one Sunday morning, we went to Sunday School, and they came and said I had a call from Stuttgart,” Remley said in an interview on Wednesday.
As a sign of the times, there was only one phone in the whole community, so Remley and her dad had to travel 2 1/2 miles to return the phone call.
“I had several chances to go and teach, but my dad would say, “You can stay and teach at home for free because the salary was not good,” Remley said. “I expected him to say the same thing about the job in Stuttgart.
“And all Stuttgart meant to me was ducks and mosquitoes, but [the man who called] said they met last night and hired me.”
Remley said she turned around to her dad, Brunce Williams, and he said, “Tell them you’ll take it.”
Remley’s husband worked for Arkansas Power and Light Company in Stuttgart. They met in October of that year, and on their first date, they went to a ballgame.
“The next morning he sent me flowers, asking me out again,”
Remley said. “When I went home in November, he told me, ‘You can tell your mother I am going to marry her daughter.’
“But I sure didn’t do that. By Christmas, we were engaged.”
The two were married for 49 years.
“So I guess it all worked out,” Remley said. “He was an electrician and a good one. He always had work.”
Remley has three children, June Gibson of Georgia, Daria Williamson of Malvern and Jon Remley of Birmingham, Alabama. She also has five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. All three of Arkie Remley’s children worked in education as well.
Daria Williamson and her husband, Hemp, moved into Remley’s house in 2000, eight years after Daria’s father died.
“When we moved back here in 2000, [my mother] was still mowing and doing her own stuff,” said Daria, who taught for 34 years before working for an airline for 10. “She had this little Snapper mower that went about 1/2 mile an hour.
“I was working at Southwest Airlines, and we were living in an apartment in Little Rock. Hemp would drive out here almost every day to check on her.
“He told her, ‘You do not need to get out here and mow,’ and she would say, ‘Well I just enjoy doing it.’
“So when it shut down and quit, she said, ‘I’ve got to get my mower fixed.’ And Hemp told her, ‘You are not mowing anymore.’
“She took care of this place until we got completely moved in here.”
The two moved into the home in 2000 and have completely remodeled the house to give Remley her own living quarters with a den, a kitchen and her own room.
“It started out as my house, but now it’s theirs,” Remley said. “We both enjoy it because we don’t have to worry about each other.
“I still feel protected, and I do my own cooking.”
Remley’s other daughter, Gibson, said that as a kid, she was always reading and climbing and hiding in trees to read.
“But she always knew where I was,” Gibson said of her mother. “So when I had to do chores, she would call me down.
“She liked the fact that I liked to read that much.”
Gibson describes her mother as kind and gentle and very open-minded and understanding.
“She’s a very wise and nonjudgmental woman,” Gibson said. “She was a disciplinarian, but she always explained why things needed to be the way they were.
“She didn’t put up with any nonsense in her classroom or with her children.”
Remley still likes to garden and has a mixture of berries, green beans and other vegetables in her backyard. She recently canned 31 jars of green beans, including picking, snapping and storing them, all by herself.
“When I get up in the morning, I check the beans, check the blueberries, whatever needs to be done,” Remley said.
She was driving until she was 98, when her eyesight started to give her trouble.
“She had a wreck when she was 98, and after we got her car fixed, she started having eye problems,” Williamson said. “Hemp was driving her to church one day, and there was a platoon of soldiers that was coming from the armory, and Hemp said, ‘Wow, look at all those soldiers.’ She said, ‘Where?’
Williamson said that after Hemp pointed them out, Remley said, “Well, they had on camouflage. That’s why I couldn’t see them.”
Hemp added, “When it comes to older people driving, when you take their license away, you take their life away, but when we talked to [Arkie] about it, she said, ‘If ya’ll think I need to give it up, I’ll give it up.’”
Remley used to quilt, making baby quilts and placements and such, but had to give it up “because my eyes aren’t good enough anymore,” she said.
“I always sewed a lot, which I don’t do anymore.”
She attends water aerobics weekly at Body Works in Malvern.
“Anything there is to do, I want to do it,” Remley said. “I don’t sit still for very long.”
Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.