A festive birthday party was recently held at Columbiana United Methodist Church for Mayme Miller Horn to celebrate her 102nd birthday.

Miss Mayme is well known in Columbiana for her 60 years playing the organ at her church and at community events and teaching English and music in our schools.

Mayme was born in Marengo County on Dec. 21, 1906 to Alfonso and Lavenia Miller. She is the sixth of nine children. Her parents made it one of their primary goals to see that their children received not only a high school education, but also a college education.

Because the grade school where her brothers and sisters attended ended in the 10th grade, each sibling finished their high school years at boarding school. They each went on to college at Auburn, Alabama or Huntington, and became a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, a veterinarian, accountants, a teacher, and a music major. Mayme finished high school in Montevallo and graduated from Auburn University in 1929 where she was in the Kappa Delta Sorority. She is the oldest KD in Alabama today.

Mayme grew up playing the piano, taught by her mother. Mayme has a special gift that can make the ivories talk to you when she touches them. She not only played at church, but had her organ brought in so that she could play at the First National Bank of Columbiana the two days before Christmas. She also provided music for 13 years for the Heart of the Heart of Dixie Horse Show. She was also the organist at the Bolton Funeral home for 12 years.

Not only a musician, she worked at the Shelby County Welfare Department in the 1930s and began teaching English and public school music in 1953 until she retired at 64 to spend more time with her family.

Family is very important to Miss Mayme. She met her husband, Yeager Horn, in Montevallo, and after their graduations from Auburn, married on Sept. 12, 1932. They moved to Columbiana, joined the Methodist Church, and raised their two children, Howell and Carol.

Yeager Horn was an electrical engineer who owed the Quick Freeze Meat Processing Plant. Her beloved husband passed away on Aug. 28, 1982; just weeks shy of their 50th anniversary. Miss Mayme has three grandchildren, Marsha Horn Harbin, Kelli Shurbert Gilmer and Randall Shurbert, and seven great-grandchildren, Zach, Logan, Griffin, Clay and Austin Gilmer, and Dagan and Lillian Shurbert.

Miss Mayme resides at the Shangri La Assisted Living Home where she lives by her philosophy of love, humility and gratitude. Columbiana has been blessed by this woman who has lived her life full of love for her family and community.