Jonesboro woman has 100 years' worth of memories

By The Associated Press

A woman who remembers Jonesboro's horse-and-buggy days is now living in a digital world.

Marion Thielman turned 100 years old this month and has seen much of the history of Jonesboro and Craighead County during her life.

Thielman remembers the Great War, later called World War I, breaking out in late June 1917 when she was not quite 8 years old. Within 10 days, Thielman experienced tragedy much closer to home.

"On July 6, 1917, my mother died and I went to live with Elizabeth Wheeler," Thielman said. "We got a boarding room near the City Hall, and I remember people talking at the table about (the war)."

Thielman said her father, Basil Thorpe Baker, was an attorney in Jonesboro who practiced law with former U.S. Sen. Thaddeus Caraway.

"Daddy won a case and it got us out of debt," she said. Her father bought a Ford 2-seater with the money.

Her uncle on her mother's side, Edgar Burton Kinsworthy, served as Arkansas attorney general from 1895-99. Her father also had political aspirations; Baker made a state Senate run that Thielman said included a stand against racism.

"The KKK met at a house near the college," Thielman said. "My daddy had a fit when he saw their electric cross. He said no one should take the law in their hands, and he lost the race because of it."

Baker would serve as an associate justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Thielman said she met her first husband, John Levin Jelks, when they attended Jonesboro High School together in 1927. They were married in 1935, Thielman said.

Thielman's son, William Jelks, wrote a tribute to his parents.

"They had a long courtship interrupted by college and the uncertainties of the Great Depression," Jelks wrote. "Marion first remembers meeting Levin when they were about 10 years old in her father's chicken yard at their residence on West Jefferson Street. ... She observed Levin and his friend, D.L. Vaden, shooting marbles among the fowl."

Thielman attended Arkansas Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Arkansas State University) and graduated from Ouachita Baptist College (now University) in 1931. She taught school in Strawberry soon after graduating.

John Levin Jelks died in August 1948.

Thielman said she and her two children, William and daughter Marilyn, moved to Norman, Okla., in 1951 so she could attend the University of Oklahoma and earn a degree in library science.

"When my first husband died, I decided I did not want to teach. I wanted the degree in library science to make money," Thielman said. "(A library science degree) was not popular in Arkansas, but we had a house to stay in."

After she received her degree, Thielman worked at Hot Springs Lakeside as a librarian and as the head of the Little Rock Public Library Reference Department.

In 1961, she married her second husband, Henry B. Thielman, an assistant manager at Riceland Rice Mill in Jonesboro. He died in 1980.

Thielman credits her long life to living right and coming from a long line of people who have lived long lives, like her mother's family.

"First of all, I did not smoke. I ate a lot of vegetables and had a garden. I like fruits like peaches and apples," Thielman said. "Part of it is my DNA. The Kinsworthys, my grandfather and great-grandfather lived over 100 years old."

Thielman said she has remained active with the First Christian Church of Jonesboro and in civic groups. She has been a member of the Jonesboro Arts Study Group for more than 50 years and is active in the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library.

Her activities also include a fondness of painting, including her drawings of owls that adorn her living room, and taking a cardio-boxing class at age 90.

"The Tae Bo class did not last any time because no one was interested," Thielman said.