Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

Las Cruces’ Clayton Flowers turns 105 on Christmas Day

Posted

“I’m feeling as well as I can, being 105,” Clayton Flowers said in a Dec. 15 telephone interview. “I never expected to live as long as this,” he said.

Flowers was born on Christmas Day 1915 in rural Surry County, Virginia. Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States, William C. McDonald was serving as New Mexico’s first governor and the Spanish flu (February 1918-April 1920) worldwide pandemic was about two years away.

A retired housing contractor and teacher, Flowers has lived in Las Cruces since 1984.

Flowers continues to live by himself in the Las Cruces home he helped to build. He is visited twice a day by caregivers (who follow COVID-safe practices) and gets Meals on Wheels during the week. He routinely rises at 4 or 5 every morning, Flowers said, and prepares his own breakfast every day and his meals on weekends and gets around with both an indoor and an outdoor scooter.

“I feel good about having built houses, having taught school,” said Flowers, who also spent five years as member of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.

Flowers said he has been “a robust person” throughout his life. He’s always been active, but he “has been careful and moderate in my exercise,” he said.

Flowers has three sons and a daughter, along with six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. “I’m really proud of my children,” Flowers said. “They became better parents that we did.” Flowers married Evelyn Lorraine Church, a Michigan native who was also a teacher, in 1951 in New York City. She died in 2008 at age 88.

“It’s pretty amazing,” daughter Kathi Bayne said about having a father who is 105 years old. “He’s Dad and he’s still there and that’s the gift,” she said.

Bayne, who lives in California, hasn’t been able to visit her father since last Christmas because of the pandemic, but talks to him on the phone almost every day.

Bower and her family are very grateful that Flowers has reached 105, she said, adding that 106 would be nice too.”

 “It’s an honor and privilege to be married to Mr. Flowers’ only daughter,” said Flowers’ son-in-law, Omar Bayne. “He’s been like a father to me. It’s been an inspiration to our family. I lost my father 10 years ago and I always considered him my second father.”

Bayne said he frequently talks to Flowers on the phone and looks forward to their next visit, “because he always inspires me. His font of knowledge is beyond comparison. He’s been a great inspiration … and I admire him for all the good he’s done.”
Kathi Bayne said her father still walks outside twice a week, using a walker and accompanied by a caregiver, walking to the end of his block and back home. He also plays Sudoku and Free Cell every day.

“I don’t play either of those as well as he does,” Kathi said.

The best gift that Dad gave us was he made us feel loved and special,” Kathi said. “That gave us tremendous resilience.”


X