Guida Ingram is turning 100 today, Feb. 7. She will celebrate with family at her home in the Piney Creek community.

Piney Creek woman reaches century mark today, Feb. 7

Guida Phipps Ingram of Piney Creek will celebrate her 100th birthday on Feb. 7.

An open house and celebration are planned for family and friends in May.

Ingram was born in 1902 to Joseph and Myrtle DeBord Phipps in Mouth of Wilson, Va.

She had five brothers and four sisters. Siblings include brothers Walter, Neal, Gentry, Estil and Bruce; and sisters Stella Rudy, Sally Street, Bertha Davis and Nannie Phipps (who died as an infant). Five of her siblings are still living.

Ingram was a member of Potato Creek Methodist Church, where her father and his brother were guest singers and where her father and mother met.

"We lived on one side of the line and had to go to school on the other," Ingram recalled. Ingram attended Maple Shade High School and, at the age of 16, took a test to become a teacher and passed it.

"I always wanted to be a school teacher when I was little," Ingram said.

She taught in Virginia at Cox's Chapel and later at Haw Orchard, which is now the location of Grayson Highlands State Park. While a teacher there at the age of 19, she was married to Jesse "Geoffrey" Ingram. She soon quit teaching and moved with her husband to Castleton in Harford County, Md.

All but one of her five children were born in Maryland. Children include Juanita Barnado of South Carolina (and now Piney Creek), the late Jesse Ingram, Jr. of Pennsylvania, Thelma Bachtell of Utah, Mildred Duke of West Virginia and the late Howard Ingram.

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