Never too old to vote

Published 11:20 pm Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Eula “Boots” Thomas casts her vote in the Ebenezer precinct. Having turned 100 last month, she completed the ballot sitting in the parking lot. One must vote to know what’s going on in the world, Thomas said.

Eula “Boots” Thomas casts her vote in the Ebenezer precinct. Having turned 100 last month, she completed the ballot sitting in the parking lot. One must vote to know what’s going on in the world, Thomas said.

While other voters stood in line Tuesday at Eclipse’s Ruritan Hall to have their say, Eula “Boots” Thomas never left the car.

Andrew Brooks, chief of the Chuckatuck borough’s Ebenezer precinct, hand-delivered Thomas her ballot as she sat in the parking lot with her seatbelt still fastened.

The “special treatment” was for good reason: Thomas, who turned 100 on Oct. 14, isn’t as agile as she once was.

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“I feel like if they don’t vote, they don’t know what’s going on,” Thomas said on the importance of voting.

Estimating she’s participated in at least 50 elections during her lifetime, Thomas said she tries not to miss any.

Her advice for young folk? “They really need to get into voting, and find out what’s going on in this world,” Thomas said.

Her friend Suzy Norman drove the centenarian to the polls. She and Brooks waited patiently for Thomas to mark her ballot, which she folded and inserted into an envelope.

Though, in the absence of a curtained booth, pains were taken to keep the process confidential, Thomas didn’t mind sharing whom she voted for.

Asked which congressional leaders benefited from her vote, Thomas said she always votes Republican.

“I really think that it’s a Republican that I want to get in and see what they can do,” she said. “The Democrats haven’t done anything.”

For School Board, she said incumbent Linda Bouchard received her vote, adding that her 7-year-old great-grandson, Jeremiah Jenkins, attends Oakland Elementary School.

“He has to leave early in the morning and doesn’t get home till 4:30 in the afternoon, which I don’t think is very good for a 7-year-old,” Thomas observed.

Brooks said he normally has one other lady over 100 vote in his precinct, but her daughter told him she wouldn’t be making it Tuesday.

That, he added, made Boots Thomas the oldest voter of the day at Ruritan Hall.