WICHITA, Kan. (KAKE) – As we speak it was a birthday celebration for one of many few remaining members of the Best Technology. Army Veteran Katie Conkling turned 102.

She says her methodology to residing 102 years is fairly easy: do what you get pleasure from, and in case you do not get pleasure from it, cease doing it. 

It is a motto that is supplied her with numerous alternatives in the course of the previous century.

“I am doing nice,” stated says Katie Conkling. “It is a improbable day.” 

It’s undoubtedly a day to be celebrated as Conkling is a World Struggle II veteran celebrating her 102nd birthday.

“I advised my physician I says I’ve already determined I’ll go to 105,” she laughs. “Oh, he says ‘nicely what’s incorrect with 10?’ I stated OK! Let’s go to 110.”

This completed veteran had humble beginnings.

“My household was poor, my father died when I was a yr outdated, I spent the primary ten years of my life within the Wichita Youngsters’s Dwelling as a result of my mom couldn’t make a residing,” Katie explains.

In highschool a trainer wished Katie to stay with artwork, however Katie says she knew learning enterprise would make her cash. 

She graduated from East Excessive Faculty in 1939.

It was Pearl Harbor that influenced her choice to enlist within the Ladies’s Army Air Corps.

“As a result of then we had been opened up to absorb the opposite army models so they may even have girls serving and that is the way it began.”

Katie’s daughter Judy Conkling shares, “She was a baby of the despair so she was in search of alternatives, and my dad was drafted early on within the struggle and he or she in all probability thought he can serve, I can serve.”

Now household, pals, and fellow veterans can look over 102 years of Katie’s life experiences and be taught from them.

“Katie is likely one of the few left who can nonetheless speak to them and share the recollections of the previous and these younger girls can be taught from historical past and Katie is historical past,” says buddy Herb Duncan.

“It has been particular for me nevertheless it’s been improbable.”

Katie nonetheless lives on her personal together with her daughter checking in once in a while, and he or she solely stopped driving when she turned 100. 

One in every of her present considerations is getting herself a cellular phone so she will chat with pals. 

She says her daughter’s engaged on that.