Local centenarian fondly remembered
Snowbird – One of Graham County’s last-living links to a bygone age was laid to rest Friday.
Neowne Hooper Adams died Feb. 9 at the age of 101 and was buried at Carver Cemetery.
Born in a boxcar at a logging camp shantytown near Citico, Tenn. on Oct. 25, 1919, Adams grew up in the timber industry, serving as a cook to thousands of loggers over the years.
Adams’ lifetime saw 19 presidents, a world war, countless innovations, a presidential assassination, a moon landing, a major attack on the nation, the end of one global pandemic and the beginning of another.
Cooking for a crew
Her son Hollis Adams remembered his mother as a person who always wanted to give.
He recalled her work as a logging camp cook, saying that she would rise in the wee hours of the morning to prepare breakfast for between 11-15 loggers before they went to work in the woods.
“She’d cook them this big supper too,” Hollis said.
He said it had been estimated that she had cooked over two million meals throughout her lifetime.
He also marveled at all of the events his mother had seen over 101 years.
“She saw the first car that ever came to Graham County,” Hollis noted.
She and her family resided in the Snowbird community, but her role in the family-logging operation took her to several places throughout western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.
Living for God
Adams was also a devout Christian, who was saved at the age of 14. At the time of her death, she was the oldest member of the congregation at Cedar Cliff Baptist Church.
Her place in the church community could be seen through a dinner the church hosted for her 100th birthday in 2019.
“I think there were 362 people that we counted,” Hollis recalled. “It might’ve been more than that.”
Cedar Hill Baptist Church Pastor Daniel Stewart referred to Neowne as a unique person and spoke to her zest for life right up to the end.
“As a matter of fact, the morning she fell ill, she fixed her own breakfast,” Stewart pointed out.
He also said that she was unfazed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She’d come in dressed up and ready for church,” Stewart said.
Like Hollis, local historian Marshall McClung – who is a distant relative of Neowne – recalled her work in the logging camps.
He also remembered how independent she was.
“Her mind was still sharp as a tack when she was 100,” McClung said. “She could pick off facts about events that happened decades ago. She was still like that, right up until the end.”
Hollis said one side of his mother’s family had regularly lived to between 97-101 years old, but that he hadn’t expected to see his mother live that long due to health issues.
However, she would always bounce back from serious illness.
“Then a week later she’d be out working in her flower garden,” Hollis said. “I figured that she would go up in the Rapture.”