Dortha Bittle, a feisty native Texan started life in the Double Horn Creek community in 1920.
Since then, her life has taken several fascinating turns, including how she went to work undercover for the FBI during World War II.
She celebrates her 105th birthday Dec. 19 in Spicewood.
Ms. Bittle - talkative, mobile and grateful de- spite failing eyesight has served numerous times as honorary marshal for the unincorporated community’s Fourth of July parade.
Her long life has been filled with its own “fireworks” – both tragedies and personal triumphs.
At about age 12, a person raced into the church service declaring the family house was burning.
The congregation arrived too late to save anything. Her father, distrustful of Depression-era failing banks, had hidden their family savings in the house, now just embers and ashes.
At another time, a family of her relatives was slain by a hired worker who was executed one year later on the same day as the vicious murders had occurred.
Patriotism and a job opportunity led her to Washington, D.C., summoned by J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI.
He would later assign her to undercover work ferreting out black marketeers selling rationed wartime goods.
Starting pay was $1,440 per year.
“My first major purchase was a winter coat,” she recalled with a hearty chuckle.
Tall tales? No! See Hoover’s postal telegrams and the congratulatory letter from her relative: Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States.
Ms. Bittle and her husband were living in Austin at the time.
Friends and neighbors will gather for her birthday celebration today.
The centenarian-plus 5, still imbued with a faithful heart and a curious nature, said, “I thank God for every new day,” adding: “I wonder if I am the oldest living native of Burnet County?”
Preston Kirk is a former Spicewood resident, who was active in the Hill Country Community Theatre. Kirk, who is a veteran journalist and a poet, and his wife of 54 years, Woodway native Ronda Dale Kirk, moved back to Waco from Spicewood to be closer to siblings and his alma mater, Baylor University.
