Rowena Malone of Conway marvels at the stack of birthday cards she received for her Aug. 6 birthday, but she’s made a lot of friends in her 101 years.
Malone said she was treated to a “beautiful luncheon by friends” the day before her birthday. Another set of friends took her to an Asian restaurant on her big day, where the wait staff and cook came out “with a drum and everything” and sang “Happy Birthday” to her in Japanese.
“It was loud, but it was nice,” she said, smiling.
And, she said the activity director at College Square Retirement Community, where she lives, sang to her and gave her flowers, and the residents all congratulated her.
“We are social animals, aren’t we?” Malone said, as she sat in her apartment with caretaker Inez Kellitt of Conway.
Kellitt said she’s more than Malone’s caregiver; they’re friends. They met through another College Square resident and hit it off.
“She’s still so very active. It’s not like she turned 100 and gave up on life,” Kellitt said.
Malone agreed. “I do have a brain,” she said, tapping her temple with one finger. “I’m blessed with being able to function mentally.”
She has a few health issues, including high blood pressure and lymphedema, or tissue swelling, so she tries to stay off her feet. She uses a walker when she goes out.
Kellitt punctuated the story about Malone’s high mental acuity. She recalled taking Malone to a doctor’s appointment, a physician that Kellitt also uses.
“He had done his exam, and he turns and starts telling me [about Malone’s health]. She said, very politely, ‘Excuse me, I’m the patient,’” Kellitt said of Malone. “She reached in her purse and got her notepad and pencil. It amazed that doctor. He’s never forgotten it.”
Malone uses her computer to research medication she’s prescribed. She also uses her computer to keep in touch with her family via email.
“The changes have been so intriguing to me,” she said.
“I had no inkling people would carry around iPhones and consult them constantly.” Malone said she had an iPhone, but she gave it up awhile back. “The changes that have happened in the last 100 years are mind-boggling,” she said.
Born in Iowa, she was the daughter of a minister and a homemaker. They loved literature, so her name, Rowena, comes from Ivanhoe. She recalled when her grandparents’ farm got electricity, which led to a big change in farming.
She remembers the first radio her family had, too, “an inexpensive table model.”
“It had earmuffs that you wore to hear the thing. I got so excited over a station that was far away by our standards. I got up with the ear phones on and pulled the radio off the table. I was in the doghouse for a while,” she said.
She went to Simpson College in Iowa for two years, then to the University of Iowa, where she received an undergraduate degree in English and speech, with the idea of being a teacher. She was in a sorority and was in a theater group, the Playmakers.
Malone worked as a secretary to the editor and as an occasional writer at The Des Moines Register newspaper. The editor permitted her to write “light pieces,” and she once had the lead editorial. “It was the highlight of my life back then,” she said. The subject was a timely one on voting, she recalled, and she referenced Socrates and his wife.
Malone married her first husband right after college. After they divorced, Malone adopted her daughter, Megan, as an infant in 1955. Her parents helped care for her daughter, and Malone received a master’s degree in educational psychology in 1958 from Iowa State University.
After she got her master’s degree, Malone got a job at the Iowa
State University Press, where she spent 25 years editing books written by faculty. “I wrote blurbs for the jackets and designed the book typographically,” she said. The works included The Death of Adam, a centennial book, that Malone still has. “I had everything to do with this book, and it went to paperback,” she said. “It was a lovely experience for me to be part of. I had a wonderful career.”
She had three in-house editors and freelance editors under her. She once went to Europe by herself, to England and to Germany for the Frankfurt Book Fair.
While at Iowa State, she was on a committee that successfully petitioned the university to equalize the salaries of female faculty members with their male counterparts.
“There was a marked deficiency,” she said. “These women were excellently qualified.”
Women’s roles have changed significantly in her lifetime.
“It’s wonderful we have a woman candidate for president, in my view,” Malone said.
Malone’s friends on the Iowa State University faculty introduced her to Jerry Malone, whom she married in 1975, and he had four children.
After she retired from the university in 1983, she worked for the Iowa Commission for the Blind, now the Department of the Blind, recording herself reading books and textbooks.
“It was a demanding job because I had to have absolute quiet,” she said, adding that it was “fun.”
Her husband died in 1991, and Malone moved to Conway in 1993 to be close to her daughter, Megan Hobbs. The Malones had vacationed at Cherokee Village and Bella Vista, and they liked Arkansas. Malone built a home, then later moved into the College Square Retirement Community, part of the University of Central Arkansas.
“I was pretty active here when I moved,” she said. Malone joined a now-defunct book club at College Square, and she has been a member of the Philanthropic Educational Organization, or PEO, for about 80 years. She joined the educational organization in college. She attended St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Conway for years, but she doesn’t attend the services now. However, she has Communion brought to her apartment.
She’s been named to Who’s Who of American Women and Who’s Who of America.
She enjoys watching the television show Castle, but she laments that it’s “going off the air,” and she enjoys NCIS. NCIS actor Mark Harmon’s father, Tom Harmon, “was a football hero when I went to the University of Iowa,” Malone said. She never met him, but he was “a far-away idol.” Mark Harmon’s character threw the football on the show once, “and I just knew by the way he threw it that he was following his father — the professional way he threw it,” she said.
Malone also took up watercolor painting after she retired, but she’s given her paint supplies to a friend. She loves to read, but she has to have a magnifying glass. Describing herself as “detail-oriented,” she still balances her own checkbook.
Malone’s white hair contrasts with the turquoise blouse she is wearing over a white top and pants, and she has on pearl earrings, a pearl necklace and an armful of gold bracelets. Her skin is impossibly smooth — the wrinkles on her face can practically be counted on one hand.
People are surprised to learn how old she is because she looks much younger. Malone said her mother lived to be 102; her father, who had heart problems, died at 95. Her daughter, Megan Hobbs of Conway, died in 2014 of ovarian cancer. Malone’s sister, Enid, died in Iowa at age 95.
It’s hard for Malone to believe that she’s lived more than a century.
“I’m astonished,” she said with a laugh. “You live life moment by moment, and all of a sudden, here you are.”
And at 101, this lady has a bucket list.
She wants to make a second trip to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville (she missed seeing a whole wing the first time) and tour Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock. “I have a trip lined up,” she said.
“I wish I had the energy to do all I’d like to do, … but I have to give up some things,” she said. “But I still have an interesting life.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.