One Sunday morning last winter, retired Salvation Army Major Ethel Coburn, 105, rolled her wheelchair into the community room of her Wall, N.J., assisted living center. She was expecting a church service. But she learned that weather had kept the officers who normally led the service from making it.
“She said, ‘Isn’t this Sunday? Well, we’re having church. This is the Lord’s Day,’ ” recalls Major Jean Booth, who befriended Ethel about a decade ago.
Ethel sang the hymn “Amazing Grace,” quoted Psalm 23, and prayed for the other residents who came that Sunday morning.
“She did it herself at 105,” Booth says. “She’s still as spry as ever. There’s no calming down with her, and her mind is wonderful.”
Ethel, born in 1904, is believed to be the oldest living retired Salvation Army officer in the United States.
“I really don’t know what the secret [of my long life] is,” Ethel says. “I live close to my Heavenly Father. He and I walk together daily, especially since I have got to the age that I am today.”
Ethel was born into a Christian home and grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., where she attended a Salvation Army church.
“My parents were Christians and taught me to love Jesus and to do the things daily that I wouldn’t be ashamed of if I were to meet Him on the street,” she says. “That’s the way we were brought up: Be like Jesus, love Him, get close to Him, and listen to His voice telling you which way to go.”
In those days, only boys could play in Salvation Army bands. Ethel recalls her officer walking in one day with a surprise for all the girls.
“He said, ‘We’re going to have a brand–new girls’ band … and they’re going on the street corner like the other band.’ That was the greatest thing in my life, I think,” Ethel says.
“Oh, they went wild,” she recalls. “The place went mad. Everyone was so elated. I know I was.”
Ethel got to play the cornet in those open–air meetings, which are not as popular today.
“The Salvation Army has changed quite a bit over the years, I would say,” she says. “In our very early beginning, I think, we were wanting to be on the street corner, wanting to face people and talk about our religion and how wonderful it was to know our Lord and Savior.
“Whenever we were out on the street corner preaching the Gospel … the children would come around us and want to be there.”
Ethel became a Salvation Army officer/pastor herself in 1923. She was serving in Albany, N.Y., when she met James Coburn. They married and served together as officers in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania before retiring in 1954. James was “promoted to Glory” in 1976.
Ethel has been alive since the time of the first Army General, Founder William Booth. She never met him, but she did hear Booth’s daughter, Evangeline Booth, preach many times.
“She was a great lady, and everybody loved her,” Ethel says. “Whenever it was announced that Evangeline Booth was going to be speaking or was going to be in the pulpit, there was a great ‘hurrah.’ ”
And how was she as a preacher?
“She was wonderful,” Ethel says. “Absolutely amazing! Just the ‘last word’ in women preachers.”
Major Jean Booth says that at the Waterford Glen Assisted Living facility, Ethel has much the same reputation.
“She is just a wonderful witness for the Lord, continually,” Booth says.
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