(This column appeared originally in the Sunday, November 3 editions of The Times and The News-Star.)

The oldest student at Louisiana Tech is also one of the coolest.

She is Sedonia Givens, who turned a tidy 100 September 26.

She’s old school.

But she’s not the same old story. Some of us are slowing down, not acting like we would if we didn’t know our age.

But Givens — they call her Mrs. Cee Cee — is a regular member of the Tech Department of Kinesiology’s Senior Water Aerobics Program in the Lambright Sports & Wellness Center’s indoor pool in Ruston. Weekdays at either 7 or 8 am, Mrs. Cee Cee and about 60 others age 55 and up ease into the water for aerobic and muscle resistance work, plus strength conditioning and flexibility.

“I do most of it,” she said. “It’s helped me an awful lot. If I can do it, anyone can do it.”

And, God love her, while seeing her receive a special proclamation from the University in the President’s conference room as both an honor and a ‘thank you’ to her for her example and inspiration, she kept the small crowd either laughing or admiring her for her independent spirit and optimistic attitude.

“Watch what you say and do it God’s way, and you can live as well as anyone,” she said, sporting royal blue Tech pants and a light white jacket over a white blouse. “Be loving and caring of God’s people — and all of us are God’s people.”

She was saying this to Tech president Dr. Les Guice, who in this case was the student, about 35 years the junior of the day’s guest of honor.

“You are impacting and influencing a lot of people,” Guice told her. “You’re an example for all of us that we should never stop learning.”

Always active and a walker, Mrs. Cee Cee took a fall when she neared 90, an incident that scared her; so her first step toward Tech’s senior fitness programs was a fall.

“I began to lose my equilibrium in my 80s, and for three years my doctor was telling me to find a place where I could exercise in the water,” Cee Cee said. “Nobody knew a place.

“Then my niece in Shreveport told me to go to Tech, that they have a class for 55 and up. She told me, ‘You could be the ‘up.’”

So she began water aerobics. That was 10 years ago.

Mrs. Cee Cee was born in 1919 and grew up in the Hilly community north of Ruston. In her mid-20s she left for the California shipyards and worked as a welder, a real-live World War II Rosie the Riveter. Then she worked in a West Coast hospital, caring for returning soldiers. By then with four daughters, she headed back home to Louisiana with no desire “to ever go back to the city,” she said.

She spoke quietly and articulately — and with great comic timing — about her love of reading, teaching her children, working in her daughter’s ministry, and helping young people find their way. And of overcoming her fears.

“I’m scared of water,” she said. “One of the first classes on a floatboard I remember shouting, ‘Get me somebody, I’m going down!’”

Instead, she remains one of the “ups,” and for her example she received a framed proclamation for providing “great inspiration and motivation to her classmates and instructors and to the Kinesiology students” and for being a living illustration of the Tenets of Tech.

After class on her birthday, the kinesiology faculty threw her a big party, complete with a money cake and a crown, the whole deal.

“She’d definitely queen of the class,” said Smiley Rogers, head instructor of the program.

“My doctor keeps telling me,” Mrs. Cee Cee said, ‘Don’t you ever leave that water.’”

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