Categotry Archives: Extraordinary People

Maudie Celia White Hopkins, one of the last known widows of a Confederate soldier, died on Aug. 17. Cause of death was not released. She was 93.
Born in Baxter County, Ark., Hopkins grew up in the Ozarks during the Great Depression. One of 10 children, she did laundry and cleaned houses to help her family put food on the table. One of her clients was William M. Cantrell, an elderly Confederate veteran and widower.
Cantrell was only 16 when he enlisted in the Confederate army to fight in the War Between the States. Assigned to Company A, French’s Battalion, of the Virginia Infantry, he was captured by the Yankees at Piketon in Kentucky, and sent to a prison camp in Ohio. Cantrell was eventually exchanged for a Northern prisoner, and sent home to Arkansas.
Despite their 67-year age difference, Cantrell offered his hand in marriage. If Hopkins agreed to care for him in his final years, he would bequeath his land and home to her. In 1934, she consented to the marriage of convenience with “Mr. Cantrell,” whom she described as a respectable man.
The couple lived off his Confederate pension of $25, which arrived in the mail every two to three months. When he died from a stroke in 1937, the pension benefits ended. Cantrell was true to his word, however, and gave his wife all of his worldly possessions, including 200 acres, some chickens and a mule named Kit. Hopkins survived by planting a vegetable garden and living off the land. The chickens provided enough eggs to sell, and she used the money to buy sugar and make jelly.
Hopkins wed three more times, and bore three children, two daughters and a son. A member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, she enjoyed sitting on her porch, attending religious services and making fried peach pies and applesauce cake.

At 7 feet, 7 1/4 inches, Sandra Elaine Allen stood out in a crowd. Heads turned in her direction when she entered a room, and they all had to look up just to see her face. Allen’s height separated her from the rest of society, but it also made her distinct. Over time, she embraced her stature and used it to teach children about accepting others who were different.
“I’m very proud of being tall. And what I try to do — if I can help even one person in my lifetime with their attitude toward life, then it’s all worth it,” Allen once said.
The Chicago native was only 6 1/2 pounds at birth. A tumor caused her pituitary gland to produce an excess of growth hormone, and by the time she was 10, Allen had reached a height of 6 feet 3 inches. She surpassed 7 feet in her late teens, and underwent an operation in 1977 to stop further growth.
Allen’s school years were quite difficult because few of her peers would socialize with someone so tall. Since no stores sold clothing in her size, she had to make all of her own outfits. Allen purchased her shoes from a king-sized men’s store (size 16EEE) and set her desk on blocks in order to write or type. Such are the trials of people with gigantism. They struggle to fit in, even when nothing seems to fit them.
Recognition by the Guinness World Records in 1975 as the tallest woman on the planet changed everything. Allen cast off her shyness and did guest appearances on numerous television shows. She appeared in the Academy Award-winning film “Il Casanova di Federico Fellini” and made several appearances at the Guinness Museum of World Records.
In 2001, her life story was chronicled in the book, “Cast a Giant Shadow: The Inspirational Life Story of Sandy Allen ‘The Tallest Woman in the World’” by John Kleiman. She was also immortalized in the Split Enz song “Hello Sandy Allen.”
The final decade of Allen’s life was spent at the Heritage House Convalescent Center, dealing with various health issues related to her size. The Shelbyville, Ind., nursing home is also the residence of Edna Parker, 115, the world’s oldest person.
Allen, 53, died on Aug. 13 from complications of diabetes and blood infections. She was buried in a custom-made, 8 foot 5 inch casket that will occupy four burial plots.

Dianne Odell never let her poor health get in the way of a fulfilling life.
Born in Jackson, Tenn., Odell was only 3 years old when doctors diagnosed her with “bulbo-spinal” polio. At the time, no vaccine was available, and the medical profession believed her only chance of survival would involve being confined to an iron lung, a 7-foot-long metal tube that forced air in and out of her lungs. While most polio patients switched from iron lungs to ventilators, Odell was unable to to do so because of a spinal deformity.
So for 58 years, Odell lived inside a 750 lb. machine, breathing in and out with the assistance of technology. Her life was spent on her back, with only her head exposed. She made eye contact with visitors using an angled mirror and operated the television by breathing into a blow tube.
But Odell didn’t just exist in that cylindrical chamber. With the help of her family and home health care aides, she graduated with honors from Jackson High School. Odell then took several courses in psychology at Freed Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn. Although she didn’t graduate, the college awarded her an honorary degree in 1987.
Later in life, Odell became politically active. She volunteered for local campaigns, and even made phone calls to voters, urging them to support several state senators. Using a voice-activated computer program, Odell also penned “Blinky,” a children’s book about a wishing star, and began writing her autobiography. For her “Sassy 60th birthday,” Odell was transported inside the iron lung to The Southern Hotel in Jackson, Tenn., where hundreds of guests honored her with a 9-foot birthday cake.
Life in an iron lung costs about $60,000/year, yet her mother, Geneva, and father, Freeman, refused to institutionalize her. Keeping Odell at home, however, was a financial hardship for the aging couple. To help the family, the West Tennessee Healthcare Foundation and the Campbell Street Church of Christ established the Dianne Odell Fund. In 2001, more than 1,000 people, including former Vice President Al Gore and actor David Keith, attended a gala to raise money for her care. James Keach, producer and director of “Walk the Line,” and his wife, actress Jane Seymour, befriended Odell as well, and helped raise money for her medical expenses.
Odell died on May 28 after a thunderstorm knocked out the power to her home and shut down the iron lung. When the family’s emergency generator did not start, her father manually pumped the machine. Weakened by small strokes she suffered in previous months, Odell was unable to keep breathing, and resuscitation efforts failed to revive her. She was 61.

Victoria Louise Van Meter, a record-setting young pilot, committed suicide on March 15. She was 26.
Born in Meadville, Pa., Van Meter discovered a passion for flying following a visit to the local airport in 1992. After taking several flying lessons, she made national headlines a year later for piloting a plane across the United States with only her flight instructor on board. The sixth grader, who encountered strong headwinds and turbulence on the five-day flight from Augusta, Maine to San Diego, Calif., set a record as the youngest girl to cross the nation.
She was just 11 years old.
In 1994, Van Meter took the controls of a single-engine Cessna 172 and flew from Augusta, Maine to Glasgow, Scotland. The trans-Altantic flight allowed the pre-teen to set yet another aviation record. Congress banned record-setting attempts by unlicensed pilots, however, after 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff, her father Lloyd Dubroff, 57, and her flight instructor Joe Reid, 52, were killed in a Wyoming crash.
Van Meter’s high-flying achievements took her to Washington D.C., where she received a guided tour of the White House by Vice President Al Gore. In 2003, she was featured in “Women and Flight – Portraits of Contemporary Women Pilots,” a book by Carolyn Russo and a traveling exhibit highlighting 47 female pilots that’s now at the Smithsonian Institution. Van Meter also co-authored “Taking Flight,” a children’s book about her flying exploits.
Although she planned to become an astronaut when she grew up, Van Meter stopped flying after her trip to Europe. As an adult, she earned a criminal justice degree from Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, and spent two years in the Peace Corps, serving in Moldova. Van Meter later worked as a surveillance investigator. In her spare time, she cared for her two dogs and cat and enjoyed sky diving.
According to the coroner, Van Meter died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. She suffered from depression and opposed taking medication.

The final year of Betty Matas’ life was full of adventure.
Last April, she and her husband Bob decided to retire to the desert. To make the 2,500-mile trip from Queens, N.Y., to Sedona, Ariz., the couple didn’t rent a car or take a train. Instead, Betty and Bob hailed a yellow taxi cab.
The Matases were life-long New Yorkers, the kind who never learned how to drive and relied entirely on public transportation. Since flying would have been difficult for their cats, Pretty Face and Cleopatra, the pair decided to hire cabbie Douglas Guldeniz to take them on a road trip across 10 states.
The Brooklyn hack, who had driven the Matases on a shopping trip three months earlier, was happy to get out of the city for a change. At the standard rate, the six-day trip would have cost about $5,000 each way, but Guldeniz only asked for a flat fare of $3,000, plus gas, meals and lodging.
When the trio left New York City on April 3, their story had already been featured in newspapers across the country. The Daily News even had a reporter follow Guldeniz’s cab and blog about the journey.
Guldeniz drove for about 10 hours a day, following a U-Haul truck carrying the couple’s possessions. At each stop, Betty took the time to stretch her legs and make conversation with the many waitresses, truckers and reporters she encountered. “Every state that we hit, people would say ‘Are you the ones?’ and we would say ‘Yes, we are the ones,’” Bob said.
The cross-country trek in the 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid SUV was said to be the longest taxi ride in New York history.
Upon their arrival in Sedona, the trio were met by a welcoming committee and a crowd of well-wishers. Sedona Mayor Pud Colquitt gave Betty and Bob a bag of souvenirs, and their real estate agent presented them with the keys to their new retirement home.
Betty spent 38 years working as an executive secretary to the president of Klemptner Advertising. Although she missed New York, she had no regrets about moving to Arizona.
Betty died on Aug. 20 of pneumonia and a heart attack. She was 75.

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a quiet icon of the civil rights era whose actions led the Supreme Court to strike down state laws requiring segregation in situations involving interstate transport, died on Aug. 10 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 90.
The Baltimore native was the sixth of nine children who were just two generations free of slavery. She attended some high school classes while earning a living cleaning houses and caring for the children of white people. During World War II, the mother of two worked in a plant that made bombers.
Although she was not a member of any civil rights organization, Kirkaldy did take a stand for equality. More than a decade before Rosa Parks made headlines for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white passenger, Kirkaldy made the same decision.
On July 16, 1944, the 27-year-old black woman paid $5 to ride a Greyhound bus from Gloucester, Va., to Baltimore, Md. When the bus became crowded, the driver ordered her and her seatmate to relinquish their seat to a white couple. Kirkaldy, who had just suffered a miscarriage and was sitting in the section reserved for “colored” people, refused. She also refused to let her fellow passenger, a mother holding a child, relinquish the seat.
The bus driver then drove to the jail in Saluda, Va., and summoned the local sheriff. When a deputy climbed aboard the bus and ordered Kirkaldy to disembark, she tore up the arrest warrant and tossed the remnants out the window. Enraged by her impudence, the officer grabbed Kirkaldy’s arm and tried to drag her off the bus. She fought back and was arrested.
Kirkaldy was eventually charged with resisting arrest and violating Virginia’s segregation law. The mother of two pleaded guilty to the first charge and paid a fine of $100 because she admitted to kicking the deputy “in a very bad place.” Although she pleaded not guilty to the second charge, Kirkaldy was convicted and fined $10. She refused to pay that fine and appealed the conviction. With help from the N.A.A.C.P., Kirkaldy received legal representation from William H. Hastie, who would become the nation’s first African-American federal magistrate and the dean of Howard Law School, and Thurgood Marshall, who would become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Marshall took Morgan v. Virginia all the way to the high court, and argued that segregation on modes of interstate travel violated the “commerce clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the right “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” In June 1946, the Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the Virginia law requiring the races to be separated on interstate buses was unconstitutional and an invalid interference in interstate commerce.
Although Greyhound immediately ordered its drivers not to enforce segregation laws, many bus companies, mostly in the south, did not change their segregation policies. To test compliance of the Supreme Court decision, an interracial group of 16 civil rights activists embarked on the first Freedom Ride in 1947. Known as the “Journey of Reconciliation,” these bus and train trips resulted in 12 arrests and inspired the song, “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow!”
After the case ended, Kirkaldy lived a fairly quiet life running a cleaning and child care service in New York. With the winnings from a radio contest, she was able to earn a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University in 1985, and a master’s degree in urban studies from Queens College in 1990.
During celebrations of its 350th anniversary, the town of Gloucester, Va., honored Kirkaldy with a day called “A Homecoming for Irene Morgan.” Four scholarships were also established in her name. In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second highest civilian honor in the United States.

Yone Minagawa, the oldest person in the world, died on Aug. 13. Cause of death was not released. She was 114.
Born in Japan on Jan. 4, 1893, Minagawa married and bore five children. Widowed at an early age, she single-handedly raised her daughter and four sons by growing and selling flowers and vegetables.
Minagawa lived through four Japanese emperors and at least six wars. She was already in her 50s when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with atomic bombs in 1945. Over the next half century, Minagawa watched her country literally rise from the ashes of destruction and develop into an economic and technological superpower.
Minagawa lived on her own until 2005 when she moved into a nursing home in the southwestern Japanese city of Fukuoka. Although she spent most of her days in bed resting, Minagawa occasionally ventured into the dining room on a motorized wheelchair and rarely missed the home’s weekly sing-along. She also enjoyed playing shamisen, a three-stringed musical instrument, and had a fondness for Japanese cakes filled with sweet bean paste.
The supercentenarian was named the world’s oldest person by Guinness World Records in January following the death of Emma Faust Tillman, also 114. Minagawa credited her longevity to eating well and getting a good night’s sleep. She is survived by her daughter, seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
With Minagawa’s death, American Edna Parker, 114, is now the oldest person on the planet.
• Watch a Video About Minagawa