“I’ve done a lot of moving,” Tooke said. “I’ve lived in five different states … I’ve just been here and there. I’ve had a very good life.”
Born on a farm in Oklahoma, Tooke, who will turn 101 on Saturday, May 30, has been a part-time resident of Trigg County for roughly five decades, and regularly visits the Trigg County Senior Center.
Tooke’s husband of about 70 years, Lloyd Tooke, died in 1998. She has one daughter, Johann Knout, one grandchild, two great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
“I met a salesman, and the second time I met him, he proposed, and I married him, and I lived with him for 70 years,” Tooke said.
As a child, she recalls her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where her father worked in the ice cream industry, although she was too young to work at her father’s place of work.
After a few years, her family moved to a different town in Oklahoma, and her father found employment at a bottling plant. He then sold the bottling works, and the family moved to another town in Oklahoma. It was there that she and Knout tied the knot.
After working and living in other areas, including North Dakota, Georgia and Kansas, she and her husband settled down in Indianapolis, Ind., and they lived in Indianapolis part of the time and in Trigg County part of the time, Tooke said.
Tooke recalled that one of the jobs paid only $10 per week and that another one paid maybe $35 a week, and she also recalled that at one point, she had only a dime to her name. “I got a nickel box of crackers and a nickel can of sardines,” she said.
