Local centenarian Alice Potter celebrated her 107th birthday Oct. 24 at the Salem Care Center. Potter was among family and friends and with a big smile said, “We had a big party!”
Potter was born on a Monday, Oct. 24, 1910, and was raised near Doss. “D-O-double S,” she says. She has an endearing way of spelling names and places for accuracy after she says them. Possibly that comes from years of teaching school.
“I was raised on a farm, and I worked the fields with my brothers,” says Potter. She attributes hard work to her long life.
There were 13 children by her parents William “Bill” and Effie (Harrison) Raulston. Potter had seven brothers and five sisters. She was the middle child. As a family, they attended Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, and she was baptized in a nearby pond. She attended grade school at Metham, which is now a historical location between Doss and Salem. She furthered her education, riding horseback to and from while at Job High School for ninth and 10th grades, finishing her high school education at Salem in 1929. Potter married Earnie Nash in 1932, and they had son Earnie Ray.
“I taught school, mostly in one-room schoolhouses,” says Potter. Her teaching career started at Victory School immediately after graduation, this being a time when a college degree was not mandatory. Potter tended to the student’s education while continuing her own education through summer classes and attained her college degree from the University of Missouri in 1962.
Potter taught in rural schools both here and in Colorado. After teaching at Victory she also taught at Bethlehem, Sugar Tree Grove, Montauk and Metham, where she had once attended as a student. In 1931, she was teaching at Simmons, then at Jamison in 1944. She went on to teach at Cherryville, Oak Hill and Green Forest.
“During the war years my two older brothers went to war and my youngest brother got sick, so I did the farm work, milked cows, fed the cows and hogs,” said reminisced one day last week. “My dad kept my son while I worked in the field. They would play and had a big time. My dad took good care of my baby.” Earnie would be known as Jack, a nickname given him by his grandfather.
Potter and her son Jack went on vacation to Colorado, and she got a job while there.
“I went to Colorado to visit my sisters and their families. I was to be gone three weeks, when I got out there, they were searching hard for a first-grade teacher,” says Potter, “and they talked me into taking the job. It was right after World War II and you couldn’t find teachers.”
This was in 1946 and during a time when teachers in rural communities stayed with a family in the area, sometimes your own family.
“My sister Marie had a son a little older than Jack. They rode their bicycles together and had a good time.” said Potter. “I enjoyed Colorado.” She enjoyed Colorado so much she stayed for several years, returning to Missouri in 1951.
“When I came home, I married my high school sweetheart, Carl Potter.” She says. “We lived here in this area and I continued teaching school.”
While he and Alice were riding home horseback from visiting neighbors, Carl sang “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and proposed.
Carl and Alice married in 1951 and settled on the Potter Farm near Turtle. While still a community, Turtle is an extinct town now that took its name from the many turtles that were at nearby White Oak Pond. Carl and Alice joined Liberty Baptist Church, where Alice taught Sunday School for over 50 years, among other responsibilities that she assumed. Carl and Alice had their son, Denis Potter.
Denis says of his mother, “It’s interesting the history that she’s witnessed, seeing a man on the moon, cars…and she’s taken all of it in stride.”
She definitely has experienced history. In a time when transportation in rural America was mainly horse and wagon to now a prototype of a flying car. Early on she had no electricity, televisions, radios or telephones or smart phones that give information with the swipe of a finger. From growing the food for the majority of a diet to restaurants and grocery stores that deliver your choices.
Potter shared that she had ridden in an airplane one time. She did not like it as it made her sick. But “I’ll try anything once,” she laughingly said.
While visiting with Potter, several people shared that she had been their teacher, and sometimes their parents’ teacher as well. Kevin Purcell, one of her first-grade students at Oak Hill from 1975-1976 stopped to congratulate her.
“Mrs. Potter was a firm but fair teacher and a good teacher. She was also my father’s teacher,” Purcell said.
Potter retired from teaching in the 1979-1980 school term. She has been inducted into the Dent County Hall of Fame for teachers for her many years of service.
Potter’s descendants include four grandchildren, Ken, Ron, Tim and Debby. She has eleven great-grandchildren, including eight boys and three girls.
Not many people live to be 100 or older. There are only about 72,000 people age 100 and over in the U.S., according to The Centenarian magazine.
Alice Potter has been a positive influence in many people’s lives during her 107 years.
She can get very excited about baseball, as she loves baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals.
For the most part, she leads a quieter lifestyle now, drinking green tea every day because she believes it to keep cancer away.
