Living happily at The Oaks on Williams Drive, Virginia Craig is spending time looking back while also looking ahead to her 105th birthday on July 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Born Virginia Pyles in Paris, Texas, in July 1921, she\u2019s seen the advent of insulin, the traffic signal, Technicolor, penicillin, bubble gum, the atomic bomb, microwave ovens, computers and now artificial intelligence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms. Craig and her three siblings grew up in northeast Texas without running water or electricity and with an outhouse behind their home. Her family moved to Austin in the early 1930s, where she attended University Junior High, which later became part of the University of Texas campus, and Austin High School \u2014 back when it was the only high school in town.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During that period, she said streetcars ran all around Austin and could be ridden for a nickel. However, her family \u201cseldom\u201d had a nickel to spare.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember the big Austin flood in 1935. It had flooded the whole downtown part, and you could not get from North Austin to South Austin,\u201d Ms. Craig said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She graduated from high school in 1939 and married her husband, Courtland, in 1940. Their relationship was bookmarked by poems he wrote for her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Penned March 10, 1938 \u2014 while they were dating \u2014 Mr. Craig wrote in part: \u201cshe wore a little jacket of blue in the still of the night\/ as the moon rolls along on its nocturnal flight\/ through the star-studded heavens enfolding me in its tender protecting light\/ I dream of those days gone far beyond recall\/ and memories of nights so dark when we gazed at the stars in Zilker Park.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He wrote another cherished poem to her when she was in her 70s, just before he passed away in 1994.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watching all the changes through the 20th and 21st centuries has been \u201camazing,\u201d Ms. Craig said. She also remembers world events \u2014 both good and bad \u2014 that today only live inside school history books.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said she remembers where she was on Pearl Harbor Day. She and her family were back in Paris for her grandfather\u2019s funeral. With little access to the outside world during the funeral, it wasn\u2019t until they were driving back to Austin that she heard about the attack on the radio.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were completely surprised at that,\u201d she remembered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, she said, no inventions or notable events were ever as personally impactful to her life as the birth of her sons, Randall and Prentice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen our children were growing up, we lived in a neighborhood where children played outside all day in the yards and did things together, and it was a wonderful neighborhood, and people were friendly, and it was peaceful,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While her sons were in school, she worked as a secretary in the Texas Legislature and State Health Department, in retail in Austin and in estate sales.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1976, her family moved to Georgetown because \u201cwe wanted to get out of the city and live in the country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we moved to Georgetown, there were three places to eat,\u201d Ms. Craig said. \u201cOne was a Dairy Queen, and one was a small cafe downtown, very small, and there was a small one across from the Dairy Queen on the access road on the highway. There was one grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, and there was a Gold\u2019s department store downtown, which was so important to people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Craig said she thinks she\u2019s lived to her 105th year because of people like her friends. As she\u2019s gotten older, she said she appreciates each passing day more and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[I] wonder what I can do the next day to help someone, and if I can\u2019t do that, I\u2019ll have to find another source,\u201d she joked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beyond her sons, Ms. Craig\u2019s family extends through her grandchildren to the latest addition, her great-great-granddaughter, Josie. Her hope is for Josie and the rest of her family to continue helping others as they get older, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope they can continue to do things for people, mainly children, young people,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is very important. I think it will continue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Living happily at The Oaks on Williams Drive, Virginia Craig is spending time looking back while also looking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-368369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368369","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=368369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}