Hampton, Leona DeAtley

100th birthday. Born in Johnson county Missouri, Hampton was the fifth of seven children born to Alice Feeback DeAtley and Charles L. DeAtley. She was teaching "country school" by the age of 17. "There were about 60 students in my class," Hampton said, "and most of them were older than I was." Within a couple of years she married Howard Hampton and followed him to the Commerce Oklahoma area as the mining industry began to boom. She said Picher Oklahoma was in its booming days, and they moved within the early social circles of Miami's prominent families and entertained business associates of Eagle-Picher Company as she traveled extensively with her husband. "It was a rich experience," Hampton said. Her finest memories evolve around the Royal Air Force pilots who were stationed in Miami for training prior to the United States entry into World War II. "You would not believe how homesick those boys would get," she said. "They would get to the point where they would not eat, couldn't sleep and as a result could not fly." Fifteen of those boys are buried in the G.A.R. cemetery at Miami. "For years I kept up their graves, but I just can't do it anymore." Intermingled with her teaching career, volunteerism and work with the Eagle-Picher company, Hampton has managed to rub elbows with the likes of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan and was a personal friend of Will Rogers. She has seen many things in her century of living the introduction of the automobile, man's journey to the moon, and witnessed more than 20 presidents take office and many wars.