402 years of life: Four centenarians share their secrets at Cornerstone

TEXARKANA, Texas — When Jackie Rehkopf got married during World War II, she had to borrow a ration stamp from her aunt just to buy a pair of shoes.

More than 80 years later, she still has one of those ration coupons. She found it recently, tucked away with her wedding dress and baby clothes that are now more than a century old.

Rehkopf, 100, is one of four women living at Cornerstone Retirement Community in Texarkana, Texas, who have each passed the 100-year mark. Laurel Lea Cummins and Ruby Old are both 101. Dorothy Langdon is also 100. Together, the four have lived a combined 402 years.

They have seen the Great Depression, World War II, the arrival of television and the dawn of the digital age. TXKtoday sat down with them recently to ask what they remember, and what advice they have for the rest of us.

The four came to Texarkana from very different places.

Cummins was born April 20, 1925, in Montana and raised in Minnesota. Old was born in 1925 in Redwater. Langdon was born in 1926 in a small Louisiana community near Coushatta. Rehkopf was born May 1, 1926, in El Dorado, Arkansas.

“We didn’t have much going on” in Redwater, Old joked.

A different Texarkana

Rehkopf came to Texarkana and worked at the S.H. Kress five-and-dime store downtown, where she remembers slipping over to the candy counter between shifts.

She also worked at her granddaddy’s grocery store on Broad Street, where she says she earned about $10 a week.

“It was a good job,” she said.

But $10 a week only went so far during the war, when nearly everything required a government ration stamp.

“You had a coupon you had to have to get a pair of shoes, and to get nylons, and to get sugar and coffee,” she said. “Everything was rationed back then.”

When television changed everything

Asked what invention changed her life the most, Cummins did not hesitate: the television.

“We didn’t really have a TV for a long, long time,” she said. “And then when we got one, it was like a whole new world.”

Before that, the radio was the center of the home. Once the TV arrived, she said, the radio “just went out the window.”

Rehkopf said she doesn’t remember the first program the family watched. What she remembers is how happy the boys were that they could finally watch cartoons.

The secret to a long life

Each of the women had a different answer for what got her past 100.

For Rehkopf, it may simply run in the family. Relatives on both sides lived into their late 90s, she said. But she offered a simpler reason, too.

“I just want to see what’s gonna happen tomorrow,” she said.

“Everybody tells me that I’m so easygoing, that that’s why I’ve lived so long,” Cummins said. “I don’t let things bother me.”

For Langdon, it was faith. “I’ve always gone to Sunday school and church,” she said. “That’s the first thing I can remember, is going to Sunday school and singing.”

And one answer they all seemed to agree on: each other.

“There’s nothing like good friends,” Rehkopf said. “That’s what keeps you going.”

Square dancing, card games and a little trouble

Ask who the troublemaker of the group is and you’ll get laughter instead of an answer. Cummins and Old, the two born in 1925, are just five days apart in age and tease each other every chance they get.

The best card player, by unanimous agreement, is Rehkopf.

They miss square dancing most of all. “That’s the best exercise you can ever have,” Cummins said. They miss the music, too. The women agreed they’d take Bing Crosby over anything on the radio today.

Two of the women traveled together for years. Asked about those trips, one smiled.

“Some we can’t talk about,” she said.

Advice for the next generation

Asked what advice they would give a 20-year-old woman in Texarkana today, the answers came back simple.

Love people. Go to church. Live the life God wants you to live.

“We have been blessed,” Rehkopf said. “I really do believe that.”