Published: June 05, 2009 11:46 pm      

100th birthday

A centenarian who marked his birthday Friday at the Raleigh County Senior Center in Beckley has seen a lot of history in his time.

“The first Suddreth came to America in 1726. He had a grandson who fought in the Revolutionary War,” the proud patriot said.

The Suddreths bought some land in North Carolina for 3 cents an acre. It was on part of that land in Lenoir, N.C., where Jack Suddreth was born.

One of nine children, he grew up the son of a timber cutter. Working alongside his father, little did Suddreth know that firsthand knowledge of forests would one day get him a job in the coal mines in West Virginia.

After learning silver mines had opened in Nevada, the young Tarheel headed out to seek his fortune. He got as far as Wyoming County and ran out of money. He decided to mine coal instead of silver but found jobs were scarce.

“I had heard Mullens was a big city. I didn’t realize until I got there that I could have thrown a pebble clear across the whole town,” Suddreth recalled.

He walked from Mullens to Amigo, where a forest fire was raging out of control. Suddreth told a coal operator there how to extinguish the blaze.

The man hired him to work as a carpenter repairing coal company houses in the summers and working in the mines in the winter.

Suddreth never made it to the silver mines. He earned his living in the coalfields and in furniture factories. Hard times taught him to manage money.

“One thing’s for certain,” he said. “When you don’t have a lot of money, you learn to be careful how you spend what you do have.”

He married and over the years became the father of seven children.

Suddreth has voted in every general election since Herbert Hoover and missed only one primary.

“I was working out of state and came home to vote in 1930. Somehow, I had been given the wrong date, so I didn’t get here to vote at the right time. I missed two days work and still didn’t get to vote,” he said.