LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – She was featured in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in the 1940s with the headline “Women in Oil.”
Today, Glenna Keesee was the headliner at the Beehive in Lubbock, where friends and family gathered to celebrate her 100th birthday.
Glenna Keesee graduated from Texas Tech in 1947, the same year she became the first full-time female instructor in the geology department at Texas Technological College.
Even though she’s retired now and living in an assisted living facility, she stays independent, riding Citibus by herself to check on her house and water her plants.
“She goes home Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. She rides Citibus by herself and then she gets dropped off about 9:00 a.m. and she leaves about 2 o’clock and comes back over here. So she gets her own privacy time,” Steven Keesee, her son, said.
Staying active at 100
So, what’s her secret to staying alert and active at 100 years old? Exercise.
Glenna said, “I walk out front, back and forth, back and forth sometimes, and get a little more. And I do exercises, and I do move my legs under the table while I’m waiting for them to do my breakfast.”
Friends brought her two birthday cakes today with twice the number of candles to blow out, but she did it.
“To be 100 old … and she blew them out twice!” Don Parks, a friend, said.
Red Raider pride
Glenna said she’s a proud Red Raider who says with a humble sense of humor that she played the trombone in the band.
She said, “And they were so short that I ended up first chair.”
And maybe since Glenna is 100 now, she can fuss at the rest of us over something she didn’t like to see in the stands.
Glenna said, “I went to every basketball, every football game. I don’t care if it was sleeting. I was sitting in that audience until the game was over. You don’t leave early! You just buckle up that much more.”
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