VERA MAE REGISTER -- AN INCREDIBLE LIFE

 Vera Mae Register: An Incredible Life

By Elizabeth Register

Logansport High School, April 2015

 NOTE -- Illustrations Will be Added Soon

Vera Mae Sample Register is just a simple woman born in the small community of Funston, Louisiana on March 11, 1912.   Her parents were Janie Doss Sample and George Washington Sample.  She had three siblings, Luella Fregia,  Garland Morell, and James Sample.

 As a child she went to many different schools, including Logansport, Maple Springs, Bethel, Longstreet, and then Bethel again.  She said she actually failed a year, and she isn’t certain, but thinks it was first grade.   On her way to school, she rode an old hoodlum wagon, sort of like a bus. She graduated from Bethel in 1930, where she also played basketball for two years. There were only six people in her graduating class. 

 Four years after graduating she married Joel Huson Register, on November 2^, 1934.   They had four children together James (Sonny) Register, Janet Morton, Virginia Davis, and Bob Register.   All four of their children graduated from Logansport High School.

Vera Mae was a nanny, worked around her father’s farm, was the girls’ basketball coach at Bethel School, an unpaid position, and cleaned the Bethel Church for 40 years.   In her early teens, she even worked at her dad’s restaurant in Longstreet.   She and her husband, who was a farmer most of his life and worked for the police jury in his later years, raised their family together.   She was about 60 years old when her husband died on January 20, 1973.

Times were different when Vera was growing up.   She never went to a school with indoor plumbing.   During her two years of playing basketball, she played outside on a dirt court. Although she belonged to a poor family, her father always wanted the best for his children. There was no electricity in her childhood home, so when her dad went out to town he would buy a 100 pound block of ice and bury it in the dirt to keep it from melting. It might not seem like it now, but having ice was a real treat for her and her family.

           

Prices were a lot different in those times.   For instance, one day she was working at her Dad’s restaurant when the Sheriff walked in and set down a quarter for two packs of cigarettes. She quickly informed him that the cigarettes were 15 cents a pack, and that he owed her another nickel.

  

Could you imagine a pack of cigarettes only costing 15 cents?   Another thing that was astonishingly cheap was her graduation ring, costing only 7 dollars, which is a great deal cheaper than the cost of graduation rings now.   Later in her life, she and her husband had the opportunity to buy land for 5 dollars per acre.   Imagine that!

Vera’s brother, James Sample was the youngest member of her family and the person closest to her.   As children, they enjoyed many activities such as hunting and fishing together. He was always a great student in school and had great potential.   During World War II he enlisted in the Army Air Corp.   Unfortunately, his plane was shot down in Germany in 1943 and he lost his life.  In 2013, a flag was flown over the U.S Capitol building in his honor.  His death left a big void in Vera’s life to this day.

This is a story related by Vera’s younger daughter, Virginia Davis:

“’On Friday evenings, Mama (Janie) and Daddy (George) would hitch up the wagon and we’d go to Longstreet to get Luella for the weekend.” It’s good to be with mother again and hear her old stories. Luella was her older sister and the first to start to school. My grandparents didn’t want her walking through the woods to catch the school wagon when she was just 6, so she lived in town with her aunt and uncle, going to school during the week and going home to the farm on the weekend.  Life was very different 100 years ago.”

           

Vera Mae Register is now 103 years old, in good health, and is still living in the home she and her husband built about 80 years ago. After being asked how she thinks she’s made it this far in life, she answered with “I’ve always been a healthy woman”, then added, “I just live it one day at a time.”