Coal Valley News Thursday, July 26, 2007 CAMP CREEK - Nancy McCann is celebrating a milestone today. The Twilight native and current resident of Camp Creek turns 106 today and she recently shared some memories of life growing up in Boone County with The Coal Valley News. "I remember the battle of Blair Mountain," Mrs. McCann said. "I remember watching the government planes flying over and my brother, Georgie, was scared to go to work, afraid they'd kill him. We could look over the mountain and see the planes in the air when they had that trouble in Logan on Blair Mountain. My brother lived in a little house on the hillside and when that trouble started he was afraid to go to work at Montcoal. But, he'd go to work and he slept in his barnloft quite a lot. He lived on my daddy's farm. I believe he was a union man. I'm pretty sure he was. He was scared to death to go to work, afraid they'd kill him." Mrs. McCann was born in the same year as animator Walt Disney, "Gone With The Wind" actor Clark Gable, inventor Frank Zamboni, Donald Duck artist Carl Barks, actor and comedian Zeppo Marx, Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney, actor Gary Cooper, singer and actor Nelson Eddie, entertainer Ed Sullivan, basketball star and salesman Chuck Taylor, actress Marlene Dietrich and pollster George Gallup. All but one of those famous people Mrs. McCann has outlived by more than a decade (Barks passed away at age 99 in 2000). She was born in the same year that President William McKinley was shot and killed and the year that states began requiring automobiles to have license plates. Mrs. McCann was born nearly a month before the Cadillac car, in the same year that Theodore Roosevelt took office and only a few months before Michigan schoolteacher Annie Taylor traveled down Niagara Falls in a barrel and survived. She was born more than four months before Guglielmo Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic radio signal in Newfoundland, Canada. The radio signal was Morse code for the letter "S". In the same year as Mrs. McCann's birth, painter Pablo Picasso began his blue period, the first prototype Harley-Davidson was built, the Cleveland Indians were founded under the name the "Cleveland Blues" and Scotland Yard created a fingerprint archive. Mrs. McCann was born in a two-story wood home on top of Montcoal Mountain in Lindytown, which was above Chap, a place now known as Twilight. Back then, though, the mountain was known as Lewis Jarrell Mountain, named after her father, who built the family's home. She was one of six children of Lewis and Mary Jarrell, she said. Mrs. McCann recalled seeing an automobile for the first time. "I remember the first car I ever saw was at Aunt Becky Ferrell's old spring," Mrs. McCann said. "I don't know why we were there, but we were there when the car drove up. It was the first car I ever rode in. Old man Natalan Workman had his son-in-law driving the car. I don't remember what I thought about it, it's been so long ago." Mrs. McCann recalled growing up in Twilight. "They used to call the place that's called Twilight now Chap," Mrs. McCann said. "That's where we used to get our mail. This area has greatly changed. I was born down on Lewis Jarrell Mountain. My mother, Mary, was a Miller before she married my dad. I had three children, two are living. Mable, my daughter, lives in Michigan, and my son, Lawrence, lives at Twilight." She says she remembers hearing about the Hatfield-McCoy feud. "I remember very little about the Hatfield-McCoy feud, but I heard about it over here," McCann said. Govenor Manchin, who issued Mrs. McCann a certificate on her 105th birthday last year, sent her birthday wishes. "Someone once said that experience is the best teacher," Manchin said. "I often speak about the importance of our experienced citizens and Nancy has a lot of experience. I wish her a very happy 106th birthday this year and many more in the future. I thank her for all that she has done and continues to do." McCann has lived through several wars and conflicts. Her brother, Sullivan Jarrell, fought in World War I. "My brother, Sullivan, was in the war," Mrs. McCann said. "I remember when he came home, we met him way down in the field. We had an apple tree close to the road and we met our brother and he had a baby (before he went to the war) named Odell Jarrell and that was the first time he saw his baby when we met him under that apple tree in our field. "I went to the Bill Brown Schoolhouse, up the river just a little bit. They tell me there's an old well still there. My grandson said it's about half full of water. That's where we got our drinking water. My teacher was Millard Bailey. He taught two schools for us. I liked going to school. We had a sign on a little board when the scholars would go out, they'd turn that board over and it said 'out.'" Mrs. McCann said her father raised a large garden. "They had a lot of cornfields out there on that mountain and had a good garden," she said. "My mother would work in the garden a lot and we'd work in the cornfield. We had a shepherd dog and when my mother would ring that dinner bell after she'd cooked dinner and that old dog would bark. I don't know if it hurt it head, but when she'd ring the bell, he'd start barking." Mrs. McCann said she isn't sure if there's a secret to longevity, but she said she has tried to live a good, Christian life. "I've tried to live a Christian life for years," Mrs. McCann said. "Me and my sister were baptized at the same time, by my husband, a long time before we were married. His name was Harvey Richmond. Several years after my first husband died, I got married to Nelson McCann and all of his children are dead but one, who is supposed to be still living. I don't know exactly where he lives now. He had a home down in Madison, I believe it was. My first husband was way up in years and he was a lot older than I was. I attended the Church of Christ at Lindytown. There doesn't seem like there's as many who attends church as there used to be." Mrs. McCann, who will be honored today with a birthday party at Meadow Brook Assisted Living at Camp Creek, said she has good days and bad. "Sometimes I feel good and sometimes I don't," she said, laughing. -- Wiley Alston Jarrell 15610 Edenvale Friendswood Tx, 77546 wajarrell@earthlink.net 281-482-3671 <>< Josh 24:15