Feeling good at 108

Lulu Mae Keaton recently celebrated her 108th birthday. [Photo by Andy Fillmore]

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Posted July 7, 2025 | By Andy Fillmore, [email protected]

Lulu Mae Keaton was born on June 15, 1917, in Waukeenah, near Monticello, in northwest Florida, shortly after America entered World War I.

“I feel good,” Keaton, 108, said at a gathering on July 4 at the Ocklawaha home where she lives with her daughter, Diane Kiner-Welcome, and son-in-law, Henry Welcome.

Keaton’s son, Robert Taylor, also joined the gathering.

Keaton credits her faith in the “good Lord” for her longevity. Her family feels her lifetime of hard work in farm labor may have contributed. Her favorite game is checkers, and she is an avid fisherwoman.

Keaton’s family held a birthday celebration last month at a banquet facility at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Candler, with about 140 friends and family members in attendance.

She received a congratulatory letter from Ocala Mayor Ben Marciano on May 27, which detailed some of her life milestones. Keaton had 10 siblings and five children, Robert Taylor Sr., Judie May Taylor, Hardges Taylor (deceased), Annie Bell Hart and Diane Kiner-Welcome, and 16 grandchildren, 40 great-grandchildren and 35 great-great-grandchildren, according to the mayor’s letter.

“Your life has inspired so many, and your inner strength and faith resonate in everything that you do,” the letter stated.

Keaton attended school through perhaps the 4th grade then “had to work” in the farm fields in Jefferson County, according to her family.

Monticello, about 25 miles east of Tallahassee, is in Jefferson County. The county was established in 1827 and named after President Thomas Jefferson while the city is named after his home in Virginia, according to an online history. People began growing watermelon in Jefferson County around 1882 and, by 1922, the county supplied “about 80% of the world’s supply” of watermelon, the site notes.

Keaton married Hardges Taylor in the 1930s and moved to the Ocklawaha area in the 1940s, where she worked in agriculture.

Citrus and orange groves in the Ocklawaha area at Carney Island grew from an original 25-acre grove started by brothers John L. and E.L. Carney, circa 1875, and expanded, according to the county’s website. The Marion County Carney Island Recreation & Conservation Area property was purchased from Coca Cola/Minute Maid in 1990. A hard freeze in 1894 wiped out the citrus trees around Lake Weir. Most of the groves were re-established and citrus groves remained an important agricultural industry until another widespread freeze in 1984, according to marionfl.org

Family friend Delores Morman, who visited Keaton on July 4, said Keaton is “lovable and unforgettable.”

Morman recalled that Keaton would watch out for her and other neighborhood children as they walked past her house in Ocklawaha on the way to a nearby school.

“She’s like family,” Morman said.