By Starr Munro Riverbend News
A baby girl was born to Warren and Sally Jernigan in the town of Wellborn on Feb. 1, in the year 1921. The youngest of nine siblings, Irene still has the oil lamp her family would use to get around at night. Electricity was slower to come to the more rural areas of the south in those years. Irene remembers sitting outside her family home with her brothers and sisters to count the cars, back in a time when the only traffic was those single cars seen once an hour passing by on their way to Lake City or Live Oak.
Today, Irene resides with her son in Live Oak, where she's lived since the 1950's when she and her husband, Oliver McCall, originally from Madison, moved their business, McCalls Store, from Wellborn to Live Oak. Oliver and Irene were married in a family member’s living room, a day she recounts as, "the happiest day of my life." Together, they had two children, Richard and Olivia McCall and, to put it simply, both had enough sense to, "try and live a good life," together before Oliver passed away in 1993.
Irene went to school in Wellborn until the 10th grade, the oldest grade Wellborn offered, then graduated high school in Live Oak in 1940 before attending Florida State University. Her 81st high school reunion is this year. She has 25 years of experience in teaching students from Suwannee County, both in Live Oak and Wellborn and with both elementary school and middle school children. Her older sister, Effie McCall, the second eldest in the family, was easily the most influential person in her long life. Her sister was quite a bit older than Irene, the baby of the family, and had an impressive teaching career of her own for 35 years. Effie also helped raise all of her younger siblings and it was never Papa who would punish the children for misbehaving, but Effie, with a stern face and the gentlest spanking a kid could ever have.
Irene knows how to take advantage of the beautiful environment living in Florida provides for hobbies and was quite an avid fisher until recently. She still has photographs of her holding a bounty for anyone who would dare doubt her skills with a fishing pole. She's also the type of person to always have a book in her hand, so much so that she became quite adept at scolding her children when they needed to be, all the while never letting her line of concentration be broken while reading her current book. She has two children that she is very proud of. Her son Richard stays in Live Oak and helps her on the daily and her daughter, Olivia, studied law and lives in Jacksonville.
Riverbend News would like to wish Irene McCall a very happy birthday. On Monday, Feb. 1, Irene will be celebrating her 100th birthday, ensuring that her Monday may be better than most of the citizens of Live Oak. Such a milestone is truly worth celebrating and we hope she may get to spend the day doing whatever her heart desires, because she's certainly earned just that, to put it in her words, by simply doing what her mother would expect from her in order to live a good life.