Glamour asked 104-year-old Merle
Cornoyer McEathron what's changed the most for women in the past
l0O years.
Get smart "Education!" answers the exuberant
Phoenix resident. "Women today are much more educated, and,
as a result, more independent." After a childhood spent
doing chores and caring for younger siblings, McEathron rebelled
at age 16 by marrying a handsome 21-year-old who owned the best
horse and buggy in town. "I figured I already knew how to
cook and clean, so I might as well do it in my own house,"
she explains.
Single-mom role
model After her marriage
failed in 1920, McEathron bobbed her hair and went to work, eventually
running her own grocery store and putting her two sons through
college. She began voting the same year and hasn't missed casting
a ballot in a presidential election since.
McEathron's millennium
Do On the eve of 2000, she
plans to kick up her heels with fellow 100-plus pals at a big
blowout held by the National Centenarian Awareness Project in
Phoenix. JESSIE KNADLER
Reprinted with permission |