Mrs. Verna Willmon

Willmon doesn't plan on retiring soon
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Many people find it amazing that at 93, Verna Willmon still loves her work as secretary/treasurer at First Assembly of God in Victoria.

But for others it's the stuff of which records are made.

"I am officially a world record," Willmon said, holding her certificate from the Guinness World Records confirming her status as the oldest full-time secretary in the world.

Her pastor, the Rev. Johnny Knight, notified the Guinness office in London about a year ago about his secretary's remarkable story.

"I say he's the one that turned me in," Willmon said.

Knight said when he first learned Willmon had taken computer courses at age 80, he knew there was something unique about her.

Other ministers used to tease Knight that his secretary was a great grandmother.Knight began responding that Mrs. Willmon was no ordinary great grandmother.

"This is a great grandmother unlike any you've met before," he said."Mrs.Willmon is an amazing, enterprising person."

When Guiness responded to Knight's e-mail, they were very interested in Mrs. Willmon, he said.

"We consider her to be a national treasure," Knight said.

But Willmon said others seem to be far more impressed than she.

"I don't feel any different.I think other people have been more excited about it than I am," she said.

Willmon still mows her own lawn and keeps her own house without any help.

"And I don't really need it," she added.

To her, it's just all enjoyment, she said.

"I enjoy all my work," she said."People talk about retiring and having fun.I'm working and having fun."

Willmon said that may be the secret to why she is still so active.

She's worked full time for 56 years, 33 of them at the church, she said, adding she got a bit of a late start in the professional arena.

Willmon didn't get her GED until she was 37.Raised in a farming family, Willmon married her first husband at age 20.For the next 17 years she was a homemaker until she and her husband, Matthew Davis, decided it would be most convenient for her to go to work and him to stay home and take care of things.

She started working first in the alterations department at J.C. Penney, and then moved over to bookkeeping.

She then went to work keeping books at a gas station owned by her first husband's relatives.During that time she took a year and a half off to go to Victoria College where she studied business administration, which included bookkeeping and accounting.

Willmon said she's gone back from time to time ever since.

"I've been updating my knowledge all down through the years," she said, through courses at the college and correspondence courses.

In 1954 her first husband passed away from cancer.