{"id":131437,"date":"2026-01-21T04:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T04:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/131437\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T04:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T04:37:07","slug":"texas-tech-pioneer-glenna-keesee-celebrates-100th-birthday-in-lubbock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/131437\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Tech pioneer Glenna Keesee celebrates 100th birthday in Lubbock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; She was featured in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in the 1940s with the headline \u201cWomen in Oil.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Today, Glenna Keesee was the headliner at the Beehive in Lubbock, where friends and family gathered to celebrate her 100th birthday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Even though she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cShe 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\u2019clock and comes back over here. So she gets her own privacy time,\u201d Steven Keesee, her son, said.<\/p>\n<p>Staying active at 100<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">So, what\u2019s her secret to staying alert and active at 100 years old? Exercise.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Glenna said, \u201cI 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\u2019m waiting for them to do my breakfast.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Friends brought her two birthday cakes today with twice the number of candles to blow out, but she did it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cTo be 100 old &#8230; and she blew them out twice!\u201d Don Parks, a friend, said.<\/p>\n<p>Red Raider pride<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Glenna said she\u2019s a proud Red Raider who says with a humble sense of humor that she played the trombone in the band.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">She said, \u201cAnd they were so short that I ended up first chair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">And maybe since Glenna is 100 now, she can fuss at the rest of us over something she didn\u2019t like to see in the stands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Glenna said, \u201cI went to every basketball, every football game. I don\u2019t care if it was sleeting. I was sitting in that audience until the game was over. You don\u2019t leave early! You just buckle up that much more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; She was featured in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in the 1940s with the headline&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[26439,23070,56381,56383,66,168,170,169,223,56382,5779,56384,1769],"class_list":{"0":"post-131437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lubbock","8":"tag-26439","9":"tag-100th-birthday","10":"tag-geology","11":"tag-glenna-keesee","12":"tag-local","13":"tag-lubbock","14":"tag-lubbock-headlines","15":"tag-lubbock-news","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-pioneer","18":"tag-red-raider","19":"tag-red-raider-pride","20":"tag-texas-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}