HAHIRA – Ida Mae (Walkup) Hall recently celebrated her 102nd birthday at The Orchard at Stone Creek where she has lived for the last four years.  

She had her favorite coconut cake with family, friends and residents, home representatives said in a statement.

Hall had previously lived at her own residence in Valdosta from 1960-18, representatives said. She has been a member of First United Methodist Church since about 1960. She previously volunteered in the church library for many years. 

She worked at Moody Air Force Base in civilian service for more than 22 years.

Ida Mae Walkup was born June 28, 1920, in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was the first of six children to John Belk Walkup and Lucy Keister Walkup. At a tender age, “Ida Mae moved to Greenwood, South Carolina, where her father was a partner in one of the very early Belk Store, The Belk-Walkup Store,” representatives said.

At about 6 years of age, she moved with her family to McIntosh, Florida, where her grandfather, Henry Clay Walkup, had been a medical doctor for many years. There, she and her five siblings, John, James, Howard, Lucy and Clark all grew to adulthood.

She grew up in the mid-1920s-30s in the small town of McIntosh surrounded by orange groves. She was active in the 4-H Club, won a beauty contest (The Lotus Queen of Orange Lake) and was the valedictorian at Reddick High School in 1938. She is now the oldest living graduate of that school and was recognized as such at a school reunion not long ago.

With the financial help of her “Cousin Henry,” William Henry Belk, the founder of the Belk stores, she attended Queens College in Charlotte, traveling to and from Charlotte by train from McIntosh where she lived in the summers. She often was a guest for Sunday dinner at Cousin Henry’s home in Charlotte.

In 1942, she graduated from Queens with honors and a degree in her double major of English and math. She was voted “Most Scholarly” in her class. She also obtained a North Carolina teaching certificate at that time.

She commuted from McIntosh to Gainesville where she worked for the University of Florida. There in Gainesville she met Lt. Hall, her husband to be in 1943 at a United Service Organization dance. James W. Hall Sr., a native of Atlanta, was stationed at Alachua Army Air Base preparatory to being shipped overseas. They married April 2, 1944 in the Orlando Air Base Chapel. 

After living in Orlando and Warner Robbins, her husband left for approximately a year of service in the Chine Burma India Theater of World War II. She returned to McIntosh again and found a job as a secretary to a lawyer in Gainesville.  

Noticing that she was skilled in drafting pledges and other tasks, the lawyer suggested that she should be a lawyer, a field that few women were in during the mid-1940s. She chose not to pursue it but later lived to see five family members become lawyers: her husband (Emory), a brother (UF), son (UGA), grandson (FSU) and granddaughter in law (FSU). She had a hand with helping several of them with their education “and was always a quiet strength in the background,” representatives said.

After her husband made it home from World War II, Ida Mae followed her husband to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, later Atlanta, and then to bases in Warner Robbins (again) and Tampa. Upon her husband leaving for extended service in Japan in the mid-1950s, Ida Mae returned to Mcintosh yet again with her only son, James Jr., who had been born in 1950. They reunited with her husband upon his return from Japan, then lived the next two and a half years in Missouri where he was stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base.

Coming to Valdosta in 1960, she has lived in Lowndes County ever since. Her husband completed his Air Force service and retired from the military but began practicing law in Valdosta, which he did for about 25 years, beginning that second career in his late 40s. Ida Mae’s son also practiced law in Valdosta for more than 40 years beginning in 1977.

Upon her husband’s death in 1987, “she continued to be strong and independent into at least her early 90s, driving and even doing her own income taxes,” representatives said. “In retirement, she enjoyed family, friends, a travel club and was active in the NARFE organization.” 

She also traveled on her own even into her 80s, flying to visit her sister, Lucy, and family in Washington State. She often entertained and cared for her grandsons, Andrew and Zachary. 

“Family is and was most important to her in retirement, as it always was her whole life,” representatives said.

Constantly a person to have a positive attitude and lead an understated simple life, she read and did crossword puzzles into her 90s. Not a smoker or drinker, her one vice might be drinking Coca Cola almost every day for about the last 80 to 85 years, a habit she still continues to this day while at The Orchard at Stone Creek.  

“While she is diminished by age, she still enjoys visits from family, meals in the dining room with her friend, Frances, and others, walking, singing hymns with Karen and relaxing in the courtyard at The Orchard at Stone Creek,” representatives said.