By Travina Coleman
Pulling up to Mildred Tincher’s home, you will find a mad scientist in the front yard, cobwebs covering her carport, and creepy crawlies everywhere.
You’d think she had a child pulling her arm to decorate — as it turns out it’s the child within her.
Tincher turned 80 years old on Oct. 22.
“To tell you the truth, I love Halloween,” she said. “It is definitely my favorite time of year. I decorate every year.”
And it’s a good thing she’s telling the truth since she was voted September’s Character Council winner as the one who best exemplifies “truthfulness.”
Mayor John Tyler Hammons will honor Mildred at an upcoming Muskogee City Council meeting.
“I am so surprised,” she said. “I never thought this would happen.”
But her granddaughter, Casey Isaacs, fourth-grader and Character Club member at Grant Foreman Elementary School, thought of her when they discussed “truthfulness.”
“I automatically thought of my grandmother and started writing,” Casey said. “She is the best example to me of a person who shows truthfulness. She shows this trait because she has never, ever lied. She never lies, even about small things. She has taught me to be the same way and it is really hard.”
Mildred, who retired from Southwestern Bell 35 years ago, said she’s just telling it like it is.
“There is not enough people in our society telling it like it is,” she said.
And her take on the progress of Muskogee follows those same guidelines.
“They talk about progress but I don’t see any,” she said. “There are not enough places for kids to do things here. I think this is why so many of our kids are getting into trouble or on drugs. They are bored.”
She also thinks there should be more shopping downtown.
“It seems like they tear down old buildings in the name of progress, but they should be restoring them and keeping the hub downtown. It’s beautiful downtown, but I don’t want to walk and see empty shops.”
Casey said her grandmother has always been kind and sweet, but her honesty is something she really loves about her.
“I don’t know how she does it so easily. She even encourages me and my brother to do the same, saying it is so much easier to tell the truth than to lie,” she said. “She tells us stories of people who have lied and then they have to lie again and cover up the first lie and then they just keep on lying and it gets bigger and bigger and by then they don’t even know the truth anymore.”
