Alumna one up on Ceres High: She's 101, school is 100

A few months ago, when Ceres High officials began preparing for the school's centennial celebration next month, they were pretty sure 95-year-old Wayne Salter reigned as its oldest living alumnus.

Not so fast, said Phil De La Porte, a retired teacher and coach at Ceres.

He knew that local attorney Pat Cousins' mother, Dora Caulkins Melugin, is still alive and well. A phone call to Cousins confirmed that her mother, Class of 1928, is motoring right along at 98. Then, she raised them one:

Cousins' first cousin, 101-year-old Mary Forney Thompson, not only is alive and well, but still works one day a week at her family's business in Sonoma County. Salter, meanwhile, didn't graduate "until" 1930.

"That makes Wayne the 'baby' of the three," said Linda Cooper, the high school's activities director who is coordinating the centennial events.

Thompson, in fact, is a year older than Ceres High itself. Born in 1907, she graduated in 1925 as a member of school's 14th senior class. Her lifetime spans 44 percent of the 232-year- history United States.

She came along a year after the great San Francisco earthquake. She was five when the Titanic sank, and seven when World War I began. She was 34 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, 56 when President Kennedy was assassinated and 94 when the 9-11 terrorist attacks occurred in 2001.

Yes, she still does bookkeeping for the family-owned Weeks Drilling and Pump Company -- and has for the past 40 years. The company, by the way, was founded the year before she was born.

And she continued to drive until she was 98.

"I decided not to renew my license," Thompson said. "I was still driving, and (the Department of Motor Vehicles) sent me the stuff, but I decided to give it up."

"She looks like she's maybe 80," said Pat Thompson, her daughter-in-law. "She's extremely sharp."

In doing research for the centennial, Cooper found going through the records and yearbooks very educational. The first graduation was in 1912, and the names scattered through the school's class rosters over the years don't simply read like a road map. They are on the road map.

"Hatch, Service, Roeding, Whitmore, Boothe and Morgan -- all family names who went through Ceres High," Cooper said. "We also have a Blaker- Kinser Junior High and there are Blaker and Kinser roads, named for families here."

She also found that some students needed more than the usual four years to get through school.

"Some appeared in the yearbooks over five or six years," she said. "They'd go to war, come back and then finish school. There was no age limit."

Thompson, Salter and Melugin grew up within a quarter-mile of one another in the area where Faith Home Road meets Roeding Road. Thompson's childhood home, on Roeding Road, still stands across the street from where Cousins, her cousin, now lives.

Thompson married a year after graduating. She and her husband, Walter Thompson, raised four sons and moved from the valley to Sebastapol in 1945; he died there a decade later. Mary Thompson said this week she recalls little about her days at Ceres High. But mostly, she said she just doesn't think anyone else would be interested.

Thompson has been the lone surviving member of the Class of '25 for many years, and hasn't been religious about attending the reunions since moving out of the area decades ago.

"I missed some," she said. "I haven't been to a lot of them."

Still, when you're 101, 98 or 95, you don't just serve on your class reunion committee. You are the reunion committee.

Cooper invited Thompson, Salter and Melugin to serve as grand marshals for the centennial. Melugin plans to attend. Her grandson, Nathanael Cousins, graduated from Ceres in 1988 -- the school's 80th year -- and he'll be the master of ceremonies for the alumni celebration.

Salter also plans to take part, Cooper said.

"(He's) really excited about it," she said. "He plans to be there for the (centennial) on the 13th and the homecoming festivities on the 12th."

But the eldest graduate isn't likely to head south on Highway 101 and then east to the valley.

"I probably won't," Thompson said. "I don't travel well anymore."

Jeff Jardine's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Local News. He can be reached at jjardine@modbee.com or 578-2383.