In her 107 years, Mildred Sterling watched the world change -- often from a front row seat.
Sterling, a Judsonia resident who was born on Dec. 16, 1911, died Friday morning, leaving a sister who is 101, another who is 99, two children and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Marietta Sterling Hunt said that during her mother's life dirt roads were paved, the moon got its first earthly visitor, airplanes began to crisscross the sky and both world wars were fought and won.
Family photos are stained and faded -- they survived the F4 tornado that waylaid Judsonia in 1952 -- with dates scrawled in cursive on their backs. The oldest photo is from 1909, two years before Sterling was born.
"We are losing that personal connection to history," Sterling Hunt said of her mother. "These things she talked about, they were so real because she saw them. Tremendous changes that happened in her lifetime."
Sterling was the oldest of seven siblings and, when their North Little Rock home became too cramped, she and two of them went to live a "stone's throw away" at the Johnson House, a hotel her aunts operated near the railroad station.
Sterling learned to play the piano early in life and it was the piano, Sterling Hunt said, that introduced her to the man who would become her husband, Charles Sterling.
Charles Sterling was the singer and Mildred his accompanist, Sterling Hunt said. They both went to college in Arkansas -- she to Hendrix College and he to the Junior Agriculture College of Central Arkansas, now Arkansas State University Beebe.
When Charles Sterling deployed to the Marshall Islands during World War II as a medic, Mildred moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked for six years in the Department of Justice as a clerk.
"All the men were called up for the war, and the women were called to work as clerks and things," Sterling Hunt said. "She hitched a ride with someone who was going there, found a minister's family to live with and lived in their home."
When Charles returned from the war, he went straight to Washington and married Mildred in the minister's living room, Sterling-Hunt said.
The two moved back to Judsonia, where they began raising two children. On March 21, 1952, the F4 tornado decimated the little town -- one of 34 tornadoes that tore through the South in a flurry that would become the ninth-deadliest in American history with 209 deaths, according to previous reports. One of those deaths was Sterling's father, William Lindsey.
"We had nothing," Sterling Hunt said. "We lost everything."
One of Sterling's sisters sent the family $75 to restart their life.
"She and my daddy were talking about what to do with the money," Sterling Hunt said, her voice becoming strained as she remembered. "They talked about buying a bed or furniture, but my daddy said, 'I would sit on a nail keg if we could get you a piano.'"
The family bought a piano, and Mildred taught piano lessons for the next 25 years, said Sterling Hunt, adding that she and her brother, Charles Lindsey Sterling, would listen to her mother teaching each day.
"Then, in the evening while she was cooking, I was supposed to be practicing," Sterling Hunt said. "She'd call out from the kitchen, 'That's supposed to be a B flat!'"
Both of Sterling's children grew up to be avid musicians, Sterling Hunt said.
Linda Jordan, who met Sterling at a mutual friend's 100th birthday party, said there are still members at Immanuel Baptist Church who were Sterling's students.
"Everywhere she goes, people know her because of her piano lessons," Jordan said. "So many people want you to be impressed with them, but there was never anything braggadocious about her. She was just Mildred."
After Charles Sterling died in 1974, Sterling moved back to Judsonia to care for her aunts. While there she took a job at Judsonia Pharmacy, where she worked until she was 96 years old, Sterling Hunt said.
"There at the end she said they just kept her on as a novelty," Jordan said, laughing.
A constant through Mildred Sterling's life, her family said, was her faith. Sterling Hunt said they attended church three times a week -- Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night -- without fail.
When it became difficult for Sterling to attend, she began dialing in to the "Tele-Bible class" Jordan coordinates for housebound and elderly Christians. Sterling was the oldest in the class, but Jordan said she contributed just as much as anyone else to the conversations.
"She was always there," Sterling Hunt said. "Any time we needed her. And she could just talk to anybody. ... She left a huge legacy for me to fulfill."
Metro on 11/04/2019