Helen Akard will turn 100 on Tuesday, Dec. 26. That’s 100 years of celebrating a birthday on the day after Christmas.
Helen enjoys Saturday breakfast at Long’s Drugs in Bearden, and that’s where we found her today. Family members joined the regulars, and a huge banner proclaimed the milestone.
Helen Akard holds her birthday present from friends at Long’s Drugs: A book titled “How Not to Act Like a Little Old Lady.”
Akard is a veteran banker, starting work at Park National Bank in 1941. She held various posts from loan officer to a short stint as branch manager, and she retired from Regions Bank in 2011, after 70 years of service.
Now she calls retirement, “the best job I’ve had.”
Janet Testerman Crossley invited Helen and her friend Eloise to join the Saturday morning coffee club a few years back. She hadn’t known the women previously, but noticed they came to Long’s regularly. “Just come join us,” said Janet, and a friendship was forged.
Janet nudged Helen to talk about her own mother, who lived to be 108. “We were out together once and somebody mentioned that a 100-year-old was present. And a young man said, ‘And which one is that?’ If there had been a hole I’d have fallen in it,” said Helen.
“Her mother drank a nightcap of bourbon and Sprite,” said Janet. “I don’t know whether Helen does that.”
It was all good-natured kidding, and Helen Akard was right in the middle. Just where she wanted to be.
Helen mentioned her brother, John H. Coleman, who founded the heating and air conditioning company that bears his name in 1945. He sold to Buddy Cruze in 1995 after a 50-year career.
Helen Akard is a proud and lifelong South Knoxvillian.