Ruby Caldwell Dunlap celebrates 100th birthday

Ruby Caldwell Dunlap celebrated her 100th birthday in New Albany Sunday with a few hundred of her relatives and friends.

She was  born in Pontotoc County on February 15, 1916, and moved to Union County when she married in 1933.

On that date, World War I was in full swing in Europe. Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States, but had not yet taken the country into the war. Theodore “The Man” Bilbo had become governor of Mississippi the previous month. Albert Einstein formulated his Theory of Relativity three months earlier.

Ruby Caldwell Dunlap is shown with her daughter Joyce Fitzgerald and her son Norman Dunlap during her 100th birthday celebration.

Ruby Caldwell was 17 when she married Tommy Dunlap, and they attended the Baptist Church. They farmed, raising cotton, some livestock and tending and milking a small dairy herd. She worked for a while at Top Dollar and was one of the first employees hired when Walmart opened its first New Albany store.

Mrs. Dunlap’s 100th birthday party was held in the brightly decorated dining room at New Albany Health and Rehab Center on Glenfield Road. She has lived there for about a year.

She is alert, keen witted and clearly enjoyed visiting with her friends and family, many of whom traveled from several states to help her celebrate a full century Sunday afternoon.