Lois Wooten

BIOGRAPHY

Lois Wooten was born in Floyd, Texas, United States on 5 May 1914, the first of two children born to parents Glen and Nora Nolen. A few years after her birth, her younger sister, Louise, was born. She has fond memories of riding in a horse and buggy, and learned how to drive her family’s Ford Model T car when she was just 12 years old. The school she attended was a two-story brick building that taught from kindergarten through to the 11th grade. Since this school didn’t teach 12th grade, Wooten and her friend attended their final year of high school in Famersville, a town about eight miles west of Floyd, allowing for them to receive the necessary credits to attend college.

After graduating from high school, she left home to attend beauty school in Dallas, but returned home after a short time due to feeling homesick, and began working at a pants factory in Greenville, Texas. It was at this factory where she met Ernest Wooten, whom she married in 1939. The couple had one daughter together, and later moved to Oklahoma in 1947 following Ernest’s employment as a firefighter at Tinker Air Force Base.

In 1950, the family purchased a home in Del City, where Wooten began working as a cafeteria manager at Kerr Junior High School (now called Del City Middle School). Following her retirement in 1975, she took up painting as a hobby, fulfilling her lifelong aspiration of becoming an artist.

In 1997, following the death of her husband, she continued to live independently for many years, volunteering at church and teaching Sunday school. In 2014, shortly before celebrating her 100th birthday, Del City recognized her in a ceremony at her church, officially declaring May 5th as Lois Wooten Day. At the time, she kept in touch with her friends and family through texts and emails.

In 2020, she began living with her daughter, Linda. Although macular degeneration has prevented her from painting in recent years, she remains mentally alert, and still gets her hair done every week.