VENANGO TWP — In a home along McJunkin Road, a former teacher recites a poem she used to use to teach table manners to her students.

“The Goops they lick their fingers,

And the Goops they lick their knives;

They spill their broth on the tablecloth —

Oh, they lead disgusting lives!

The Goops they talk while eating,

And loud and fast they chew;

And that is why I'm glad that I am not a Goop — are you?”

When she's done, Veda McGinnis smiles and says she knows a lot of poems and can recite them from memory.

That's pretty good for a woman born Jan. 31, 1914.

“I was born in 1914: I started the First World War,” she said with a laugh.

Her daughter, Karen Terwilliger, said her 107-year-old mother still walks, reads her Bible every day and gets in and out of bed by herself.

Another daughter, Abbie Reader of Jackson Center, said, “She's seen about everything there is to see,” including the invention of cars, electric lights and changing clothing styles.

“She started with a horse and buggy,” Reader said. “She used to tell us that when she was in first grade, the teacher would say, 'Put your books down, put your books down,' and they would all run outside to see a car go by. It was such a rarity.”

Through a long life that saw her start as a teacher in a one-room school house and contained two husbands and 12 children in an extended, blended family, she never broke a bone and never had surgery except a childhood tonsillectomy.

And that even counts the time she and her sister, Kate, were crossing the Kinzua Bridge in McKean County, a 301-foot-high railroad trestle, when they were surprised by an oncoming train.

The two couldn't outrun the train on the trestle's half-mile length and were forced to lay on the outside of the rails as it thundered past

Except for her first child and her last, McGinnis gave birth to all her children at home, including a breech birth.

She was born in Bradford County to George and Bertha Cotton. Her father farmed and worked in the oil fields in the county.

She married Harold Warters and had two children, Dale and Louise.

After McGinnis got her teaching certificate from Clarion State Normal School, she began teaching at the Six Points one-room school house, two miles outside of Eau Claire.

It was there she taught some of the five children of widower David Zeldon “Ike” McGinnis.

She married McGinnis and they had five more children together.

McGinnis taught for nearly seven years. In addition to instructing children in all grades, she was expected to clean the schoolhouse, wash its windows and desks and stoke its potbellied stove in the winter months.

And impose discipline, which wasn't always easy for the 5-foot, 2-inch teacher.

“One farm boy brought in a snake,” she said. “He thought I would be scared, but I took it by the tail and wrapped it around his neck.”

When she was teaching at the Turtle Creek one-room schoolhouse, it caught fire one winter's day.

“I saw fire up on the wall and I said, 'Get the children out,'” she said. “It was in the middle of winter and we went to the next-door neighbor. I had the older children help the younger children with their coats and books.”

Eventually, she stopped teaching to raise her children, but continued to be a substitute teacher and a teacher to students who were homebound before finally retiring in 1964.

Her daughters said she was also well known for playing piano in churches around the area.

“She could play now if I had a piano,” said Terwilliger, who moved her mother into her house six years ago.

McGinnis said she spends her days singing and reading the Bible.

“I read my Bible every day,” she said.

Terwilliger said her mother read her Bible cover-to-cover two and a half times last year, and makes notes and commentary as she reads.

“Right now, I feel pretty good,” McGinnis said.

She attributes her long life to “good living: no drinking, no smoking, no overeating. My kids keep me young, and my faith.”

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