When Ella Clarke Nuite was a University of Georgia student, there were about 1,500 male students and only about 125 females.

Creswell and Myers weren’t dormitories – they were people.

The residents of Soule Hall could take a dip in the basement swimming pool, and after “lights out” at 11 p.m., students who wanted to study had to do so in the bathrooms.

Nuite, who graduated in 1927, visited her alma mater in February, just a few days before her 101st birthday, with two of her daughters—Furman grad Irene Lofton and fellow UGA alumna Charlotte Kitchen.

“It’s a changed world,” said Nuite, who graduated in the second class of women to attend four years of courses at UGA. The university first admitted undergraduate women in 1918, but the first classes of women had already taken college classes at other institutions like the State Normal School, a teaching college on the grounds of what is now the U.S. Navy Supply Corps School on Prince Avenue.

Nuite majored in home economics, a department she learned has grown into the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

“That’s what they call it now?” she asked, as she shared her memories with Dean Sharon Nickols.

Nuite was one of four children, three of whom attended and met their future spouses at UGA.

“My father called Georgia the matrimonial bureau,” she said.

Mementos in Nuite’s scrapbook include the 1926 football schedule, notes from friends about “the lovely times when we went to forestry square dances,” and a newspaper article describing the 264-member graduating class of 1927 as “one of the largest classes in the history of the institution.”

Nuite learned sewing from Mary Creswell, the first woman to earn an undergraduate degree at UGA. Creswell later served as head of the home economics program and is considered the first dean of the College. Creswell’s sister, Edith, did administrative work and a high-rise dormitory now bears their surname.

Jennie Beth Myers, after whom Myers Hall is named, served as house mother of Nuite’s dormitory—Soule Hall.

Kitchen lived in Myers and Creswell dorms before she graduated in 1967.

During their visit, Nuite and her daughters toured both Soule and Myers halls.

Nuite, who lives by herself near Hephzibah, still tends a garden and keeps goats. She also maintains some control of the Windsor Spring bottled water company, named after a spring on her property. After inheriting the business from her mother in 1961, Nuite managed Windsor Springs on her own until she was 80 years old and a grandson became involved. She also is landlord of nine homes she has purchased and renovated over the years.

“She always has something to see about,” Kitchen said. “She is very independent, very strong-willed.”

In fact, Nuite was honored in October as America’s oldest worker by Experience Works, a nonprofit organization that offers training, employment and community service opportunities for mature workers. The recognition included a trip for Nuite and Kitchen to Washington, D.C., where Nuite spoke to those attending the organization’s convention.

Nuite swears by three balanced meals a day, starting with a hot breakfast. When she broke her leg at 95 and had to have a steel pin put in it, Kitchen said doctors thought she would never walk again. She was up and about six weeks later.

While visiting with Rick Lewis, professor of foods and nutrition, Nuite underwent a bone scan. While Lewis said there are no records to determine what the bones of a centenarian “should” look like, he said Nuite has the bones of a woman in her mid-60s.

The visit showcased some of the many advances Nuite has seen in her 101 years.

“I’m living in a changed world than what I grew up in,” she said. “I was born in the horse and buggy days, and I’ve lived to see the outer space days.”