Melvina Neal loves a good party, and she has reason to celebrate. Her family has planned three days of festivities around her 100th birthday this weekend.
"There will be cake," Neal says.
Neal was born in Friars Point, Miss. Her mother died in childbirth, and Neal was raised by her grandmother in Helena.
"My mother passed with the baby next to me, and they brought me to Arkansas. I was small. We were raised on a farm," she says. "We had to do some of all types of work. We raised animals, cows, and grew potatoes. My grandma and grandpa had a bunch of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We had a happy childhood."
Neal's grandmother was a midwife. Her grandfather farmed and was called on often "to speak big words in the Bible."
"They sent us to school and learned us how to read the Bible," she says. "I had to work hard but it wasn't bad."
She did not go with her grandmother to the homes of the women who were having babies, but she remembers their families arriving to pick her grandmother up in their wagons.
"She would be gone for a week but we grandchildren would stay at the house," she says. "We worked in the house, and my grandmother did a lot of fishing and she could cook -- she was a great cook and a great housewife."
Neal says she learned those things from her grandmother, and she later passed those things on to her children, including them in housework like washing laundry and hanging it to dry, dusting, cleaning and organizing.
Neal worked in cafés before she became a mother, and various jobs thereafter. She cleaned business offices around Helena while the children were growing up, founding a commercial cleaning company that served insurance and doctor's offices, real estate agencies and other corporations.
"In the morning when we woke up we always had a hot breakfast," says Brenda Thomas, Neal's second youngest child. "It wasn't just cereal, it would be eggs and bacon and pancakes and grits and rice and biscuits and stuff."
Sometimes she took the older children with her so they could help with the work. When they were in school, she would spend the day cleaning offices and then as they made their ways home she would start preparations for another hot meal for her family's dinner.
"My dad worked in a factory, and it was always like, 'Your dad is home. He's hot, he's tired ... ' and she would always have his food ready and we would take it to him if he didn't come to the dining room table," Thomas says.
Neal had been married to her husband, Jerry Neal, for 52 years when he died in 1991.
"I met him after my granddaddy died, in 1936," Neal says.
They had 12 children, three of whom died in infancy.
"I went to church, I've been a Sunday School teacher, I've been in the choir and all of my children were in church. Now I'm on the Mother Board," says Neal of the church group made up of senior citizens. "I've loved it."
Education was a constant focus for Neal, who left school in the 11th grade. Jerry Neal had only finished the sixth grade.
"They raised the nine of us in Helena/West Helena," Thomas says. "All of us have some type of degree."
The Neals paid $600 for their first house, on Alabama Street in Helena, in 1959. They made several updates and countless repairs while raising their family in that home over the next 30 years. Once grown, their children pooled their money then and bought their parents another house.
In 2019, Neal's house burned, and Thomas helped her move to Little Rock to be near her and her two sons.
Neal is known for wearing hats, especially to church on Sundays, and for one of the celebrations planned for her birthday this weekend those hats were to serve as table centerpieces. Neal also asked that her guests wear Kentucky Derby-style hats to the party.
"She's still very organized and she's a sharp dresser," Thomas says. "She's still ordering out of catalogs. She has UPS coming to her house as much as mine, almost."
She had outfits picked out for her parties at least a week in advance. There was to be one party with the people at Cottages at Otter Creek, the assisted living facility where she lives. There is a dinner for her family and close friends -- the guest list included 95.
Today, her actual birthday, will be spent with some of those people and more.
Neal had four sisters and one brother; all four sisters died before Neal had children. One of her sisters died during childbirth, but she cannot remember -- if she ever knew -- what happened to the other three. Her brother lived to be 90.
She does not know what to credit for her own longevity but surmises it may have to do with those around her.
"I am really blessed," Neal says. "It may give me some strength to try to help myself. I'm proud of my family."
If you have an interesting story about an Arkansan 70 or older, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:
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