CITRUS HEIGHTS, CA (MPG) - Citrus Heights resident Gertrude Thomas will celebrate 108 years of life with family and friends on March 1 at Brookhaven Home. She will turn 108 on Feb. 28.

Born Gertrude Irene Markham, she is a direct descendant of a Mayflower passenger on her mother’s side.

Thomas arrived in Citrus Heights following a fall in her Rio Linda home of 57 years.

Claudia Artan who runs the Brookhaven, a six-bed home, recalls receiving the call from a placement agency asking her about Thomas being 107. She said in a text, “I was so excited, it’s like going in a field with flowers and you find one rare one. It was very special for me.” Thomas arrived at her new home on Sept. 1, 2024. 

Gertrude Thomas is with her son, Paul; grandson, Reece; grandson, Oliver; daughter-in-law, June; and grandson, Ronin. Photo by Claudia Artan

While Thomas had birthday celebrations from her 100 to 103 years in Rio Linda, it was her 104th birthday that all the stops were pulled out. Coming out of COVID-19 in 2021, there could be no birthday party so family members passed the word around to drive by the house and honk. A car club heard about it and 106 classic cars began what ended up being a parade of family, neighbors and family driving by. There were lots of flowers and balloons and 350 birthday cards. 

KCRA and K-Love Radio reported on the impromptu party. Thomas has been on Facebook ever since.

She received a T-shirt which read, “I was vaccinated and turned 104 today.”   

In 2003, Thomas wrote her autobiography, “Tidbits from my Childhood,” which covered the first 22 years of her life. Even in that short period, she had many fascinating stories. 

In 2022, at age 105, “Granny” Gertrude Thomas waits with her grandson to throw out the first ball on opening day of Rio Linda's Little League season. She got a standing ovation from the crowd. 

She described President Franklin D. Roosevelt who began his third term in 1941 when Thomas was 22 and married. She remembers registering to vote and writing down her maiden name of Markham. When election officials noticed what she wrote, according to Thomas, “they chased her down and ordered her to make the correction of using only her married name.”

Thomas had three siblings, her older sister, Opal, born in 1915; her brother, Eldon, born in 1918; and her little sister, Phyllis, born in 1920. Living on farms and in a small town gave them many opportunities to enjoy nature and their families, creating their own entertainment through the Depression and in every kind of weather.

Thomas was born in the bedroom on her grandparents’ farm in Roundup, Montana, 18 miles out of town. This was a 160-acre homestead deeded to her father by the president. Her grandparents’ farm was her first home about three miles from the small cabin that her father was building for their new family. They had no electricity or telephone, indoor water or indoor bathroom. They lived there until the family moved into town.

Living conditions improved when her grandparents moved to Washington and Thomas’s family moved into the larger farmhouse. 

Thomas and her siblings attended their first years of school in a one-room schoolhouse with eight grades in the same room. They could walk to school when it was only one mile from home, until the building was moved four miles away. 

Four generations of Gertrude Thomas’ family includes a 1 year old to centenarian Thomas. This picture was taken when Thomas was 105 at her Rio Linda home. Photo courtesy of Paul Thomas

Unfortunately, they had to miss one year of school until their mode of transportation became “Chaps,” a little colt they bottle fed and raised as a pet. Finally, Chaps was hooked up to their two wheeled cart with one long seat and a bag in back for books and lunches for the four miles to school. 

The family moved to Pullman, Washington when Thomas was 11. She finished school there and graduated from high school in 1935 with her sister, Opal, two years younger. They crossed the stage at Washington State College to receive their diplomas.

A year after graduation, Thomas worked as a live-in housekeeper. While visiting friends in Waterloo, Oregon, she met Floyd Thomas, her future husband. They were married in 1937and remained in Oregon until 1957 when they moved to Rio Linda.

Living in such hard times and during a Depression, Thomas has learned to “go with the flow” of life. Living on a farm where they raised or grew almost all their own food, Thomas said, they were better off than many. However, when asked about how the Depression affected them, Thomas said, “we were already poor. We were depressed all the time.”

Gertrude Thomas is portrayed as Mrs. Santa Claus with her great-granddaughters, Kayle and Allison Thomas.

Thomas learned about hard work but saw some of it as fun, such as helping her mother can and quilt, operate a grain grinder, feed the chickens and cows, gather eggs, use a milk and cream separator, and iron with a flat.

They were never bored, according to Thomas. They entertained themselves by climbing up into a pine tree and waiting for the wind to sway the tree and sliding down hills in a scoop shovel or ladder. They gathered for picnics with other farm families and made homemade ice cream.

When asked her secret to living long, Thomas answered, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and be happy. The Lord has been so good to me all these years. Everybody is so good to me.”

Thomas likes to practice what she preaches, she said. She worked on many election boards, helping women get more rights, was active in her church and donated her time and money to the Union Gospel, making and delivering Operation Christmas Child boxes.