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Coye Reid: Treasure in Pecan Gap
By Bill Hankins
The Paris News
Published May 12, 2009
Coye Reid spends much of her time sitting by her living room window in her Pecan Gap home watching the world go by.
“It’s comforting to see movement out there, cars whizzing by, but I can’t see as well as I used to,” she said.
She has seen much of the world go by in her 100 years.
She will be 101 on Aug. 17 this year.
The once spry and active woman has been slowed in the past three years by a fall that broke her hip and macular degeneration that has damaged her eyes.
But she remember all the youngsters she taught in her 38 years in Pecan Gap classrooms.
“It was much different back then,” she said. “I had 35 kids in a classroom by myself. They didn’t have teachers’ aids then, and when they did get them, I spent more time teaching the aids than it was worth.”
She taught the youngsters of Pecan Gap, then their children and their grandchildren in a red brick two-story building where the Fannindel Independent School District Elementary School is now, and for the last few years of her teaching career, she taught in the current elementary school.
Pecan Gap and Ladonia schools consolidated during her teaching career, and the elementary school remained in Pecan Gap while the high school was located in Ladonia.
“I don’t think I could teach today,” she said. “The kids are too rowdy, and you can’t discipline them,” she said.
She is the daughter of a minister, and has outlived her family — her parents, a brother and sister.
She has one daughter, Peggy Durham, who manages the family property — a farm and a home in Pecan Gap.
Coye Reid still leads an active life and raised a vegetable garden and flower garden until two years ago, when her eyesight became so bad she no longer could see to care for her plants.
“My daughter sprayed Round-up on my garden because it was growing up,” she said with a sadness in her voice.
Then, the bout with her eyesight came, first it was cataract removal, then the doctors told her the eyesight could not be repaired.
She was born in Blue Ridge in 1908 and came to Pecan Gap after her father became pastor of the First Baptist Church there.
There, she married John Reid, who was in the grocery business, and became a teacher in the local school.
“I made $80 a month back then, and there we only had a fan in the classroom to keep us cool in the hot, fall days,” she said. “But most of the kids were let out of school in the fall to pick cotton. We had five cotton gins in Pecan Gap at that time.”
“When I came to Pecan Gap, there were the five gins, a bank, two or three doctors, and the West side of town was all brick buildings, including a general merchandise store.”
She said a tornado, two or three fires, then another tornado brought Pecan Gap down.
“Now, there is a feed store, a post office and two restaurants,” she said. “We don’t even have a filling station or a grocery store. We have to go to Paris or Commerce to buy groceries.”
She said back in the early days local stores opened on Sunday because everyone was in the fields working during the weekdays.
“Cotton pickers also came in from Oklahoma and other parts of the state. Cotton was a big thing back then, and now there are no gins at all,” she said.
She said living as long as she has makes for some interesting moments.
“When I hit 100, my daughter and I were driving to church, and I saw all those cars parked there,” she said. “I asked my daughter what in the world was going on in church to bring that many people out. Then I found out it was a big celebration for my birthday.”
She received a letter from President George Bush, Billy Graham and other state and national leaders congratulating her for reaching 100.
“After that, I was asked to go to ride in a parade and speak to a class in Ladonia, and the kids had never seen anyone 100 years old,” she said. “They just kept saying: ‘She’s a 100 years old.’”
She has led a healthy, active life until a few years ago, when she got a hearing aid.
“I told friends, the first thing I am going to do with this hearing aid is sit in the back of the church,” she said. “Because my father was a minister, I spent many years in the front of the church. He insisted that is where I should sit. I had to walk a chalk line and be a model for all the other kids.”
She said during her life she had no special diet or anything else to cause her to live so long.
“I had an aunt who lived to 101,” she said. “I guess it is just something in the family. I just grew up, and I like food, all kinds of food.”
She still is active, going shopping with her daughter, and regularly going out to get her hair done at Lori’s All About Hair in Roxton.
Some of her former students come back to see her from time to time, and that brings back memories of the old days.
Some are doctors and lawyers and successful people in life.
At other times, she just sits by the window and watches the world go by.
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