Gladys 102
Daughter labels Summit View resident ‘feisty’
Gladys Monday, who turned 102 Saturday, March 25, said she tries to keep up with her birthdays but she doesn’t worry about them.
“I could get meaner than that,” she said Tuesday, March 21, about turning 102 and then laughed. She sat with her daughter, Regina Stinnett of Farragut, in a lounge near the lobby of Summit View of Farragut, LLC, where Gladys resides.
“She’s feisty,” Stinnett said about her mother.
“I’m down here [in the lounge] about every day,” Gladys said. “Them girls tease me to death.”
“She kids a lot with the staff,” Stinnett said. “Just about everybody teases her, and she’s right back at them.”
When asked what helped Gladys live to be 102, she answered, “I don’t worry about [turning 102] because I’m not sick or anything like that, and I sleep by myself and that’s another good idea.”
“She has been pretty healthy most of her life,” Stinnett said. “The thing that got her was she fell and broke a hip back in 2012.”
To stay healthy, Glayds said, “I just set my head and learned what to do and what not to do.”
“She’s always been very conscious of her weight, so she’s kept her weight down,” Stinnett said.
“And, when [Stinnett] goes down there to sing, I have to go down and sing with her,” Gladys said and laughed. She referred to her daughter who sings for the Summit View residents.
Farm life was a major part of Gladys’ life. “We’ve always been on a farm,” she said.
Gladys grew up in Sevier County on a farm near where Douglas Dam now is located. Stinnett said one of the branches of Gladys’ family was the Douglases.
“All them cattle, those horses and stuff, we had a good time up there,” Gladys said. “We were right on the river, too. We had a good time. Of course, I wasn’t big enough to get out there with the rest of them.”
Gladys also spent time with her cousins at her grandparents’ farm, helping with the gardening in the summer time.
“They were close to the French Broad River,” Gladys said. “They had a great big farm.
She got married to Carl Monday when she was 17 years old. Before she raised a family, though, Monday worked at Brookside Mills.
“They had stuff where you had to go around and count out stuff,” she said.
“She was pretty young when she worked there,” Stinnett said.
“It was a good job though,” Gladys said. “I quit when I started having babies.”
She had four children: Gene Monday, Arnold Monday, Regina Monday, Stinnett and Mike Monday. She has 10 grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
“After I got married, we had horses and cows and dogs and cats and everything else in that field out there,” Gladys said.
“Momma and daddy bought this 26-acre farm in Hardin Valley,” Stinnett said. “It was about 1960. My dad always wanted a farm, so he purchased baby calves, pigs, chickens and a pony — that was for me at the time. It was all of our jobs to keep them fed, especially the calves.
“We bought these calves that were from Five Acres Farm,” Stinnett added. “They took the calves away from the mothers because they wanted to milk the mothers for milk. The calves, they sold, so we had to feed them milk.
“And we had lots of garden,” she said.
“[My children] would have horses and cows to play with, and they weren’t supposed to do that,” Gladys said.
Gladys lived at the family farm for 52 years then moved to Summit View in 2012.
“We weren’t supposed to name them but we did,” Stinnett said.
“We had a football field-size cornfield and things like that so we froze vegetables and canned vegetables,” Stinnett said. “There were lots and lots of tomatoes. That was my dad’s specialty.”
