“My father’s aunt lived to be 114, so I guess I get my longevity from his side,” she said.
Born at the family’s home on Dunbar Street, Jackson was 2 years old when the 1913 flood overwhelmed Dayton, and remembers “being carried out of the window and put into a rescue boat with my mother and brother.”
She attended Dayton’s Garfield School through the fourth grade, then moved to Kentucky to live with an aunt. “I finished 11th grade there,” she said, “but didn’t get to graduate because my mother died a month after my youngest brother was born, and I had to return to take care of him.”
For entertainment, the family listened to the radio, and, although they didn’t have a car, her father’s employer would let them use his horse and buggy on Sundays, “and Dad would take us for a ride.”
She remembers the bread lines during the Depression, but said her family didn’t suffer much. “Father worked for Andrews Bakery; Mr. Andrews treated us like family and made sure we had food, coal and ice.
“The iceman would come on Monday and Friday, and the coal man would deliver a ton of coal at a time in a garage we had.”
Jackson married in 1937; the couple owned and operated Williams Cleaners on West Fifth Street until their divorce in 1945, the year World War II ended.
She moved in with her oldest brother’s family, and worked at Thal’s Department Store downtown. “I rode the trolley to work, and walked through the Arcade every day. There was a grocery aisle where I’d buy things.”
She also worked as an elevator operator in the Commercial Building downtown.
“I loved traveling, and took the Greyhound Bus or train to many cities. I enjoyed every place I went.”
At 55, she remarried and moved to Tennessee, returning to Dayton when her husband died in 1989. “Dayton’s my home,” she said.
But she hasn’t given up on marriage, said her niece, Katherine Williams: “She thinks God has another husband waiting for her.”
A member of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, Jackson attends every Sunday; she lives independently in her Harrison Twp. apartment, and goes to the Roosevelt Senior Center twice a week. That was the site of one of her birthday celebrations; the other was held at her apartment complex’s community room.
“They started these celebrations when she was 100,” said Williams. “She loves to dress up and always changes clothes and re-applies her makeup between the parties.”
About this year’s festivities, Jackson said, “The parties were out of this world, like a circus, and I brought all the decorations home.
“I’ve lived an exciting life, and am very thankful I can still be here as well as I am — but I can’t say I’d like to stay for another 105.”
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