by Donna Lampkin Stephens

Dora Anna Fill of Conway, who will turn 100 on Sept. 6, has packed more life into those years than most of her contemporaries.

She is “definitely” the oldest member of the Faulkner County Amateur Radio Club and has been a ham radio operator for decades.

She only gave up her driver’s license about a year ago.

But perhaps the highlight of her long life was eloping to Hawaii for her second marriage when she was in her late 70s, her beau in his 80s.

“They were friends for years, and she was going to fly to Washington state to meet him, and they were going to Hawaii from there,” said her daughter, Kittie Aaron of Conway, with whom she lives. “I had them on the phone and said, ‘Y’all are going to get married, aren’t you?’

“They called the day after they got married in Hawaii.”

Dora Anna met Bill Fill through the North Little Rock Amateur Radio Club. After both lost their spouses, they decided to elope.

“I had it kind of figured out, but my brother didn’t,” Aaron said. “Bill called Joel up at his office and said, ‘I just want you to know I just married your mother.’”

After the Fills moved to Conway, they joined the Faulkner County Amateur Radio Club.

Jim Grinder, a board member of the FCARC and a member of the club since 1990, called Dora Anna “a little firecracker.”

“She’d come in there and give us a hard time,” he said, chuckling. “She took no prisoners. I love her to death. She’s like a grandma. I ask her when we’re going dancing. She’s my dance partner.”

He said Dora Anna and Bill were the talk of the organization.

“The doctor told Bill he had to give up waterskiing when he was 70-something,” Grinder said. “If I was going to list them as a couple, I’d call them Bonnie and Clyde. She wasn’t afraid to do anything he could do, and she tried to outdo him. And he was happy if she did. He was that kind of guy. Good, loving, friendly competition kept them both young.”

Bill Fill died at 100 in 2012. The couple had been married for 19 years.

Dora Anna was an only child, born and raised in Houston, Texas. She married Francis Graziani, and the couple had three children: Paul, Joel and Kittie. Graziani’s job brought the family to Alexandria, La., and eventually to North Little Rock, where the children grew up.

“It was good,” Aaron said of her childhood. “(Dora Anna) was involved in Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. She was the first bookkeeper for Memorial Hospital and did all the billing and stuff, and later she was a bookkeeper for a physician’s office.”

Paul was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 3.

“So she had to deal with that in 1951, when there wasn’t a whole lot you could do for diabetes,” Aaron said. “Treating it was kind of new back then.”

As he grew up, Paul became interested in ham radio and eventually got his license. That interest would change his mother’s life and augment his own.

After he graduated with an engineering degree and was working in Oklahoma, Paul lost his vision, a diabetes-related development.

“He came home and went to Arkansas Enterprises for the Blind and was working on his master’s,” Aaron said. “He wasn’t married yet, and to help him out, our mother started taking him to his ham radio meetings. 

“He’d loved it since he was a kid, and I always remember him being interested in it. After she started taking him to meetings, she got involved and started taking her test.”

Dora Anna learned ham operations by reading the testing materials to her son, who died a few years ago.

“Why go to the meetings if you’re not going to be part of it?” Aaron said. “Once she got involved, she realized she really liked it.”

None of the rest of the family got the ham radio bug, but they did support Dora Anna and Paul.

“After she retired, that gave her a hobby,” Aaron said. “My dad bought her a radio, then she bought herself a nicer one. We still have a ham radio in the back bedroom.”

After Dora Anna married Fill, they split their time between the 501 and Summit Lake outside Olympia, Wash.

And they continued their love of ham radio, becoming active members of the Faulkner County club after they moved to Conway.

Grinder called her a “fiery DX contester.”

“In the world of radio, we make contacts, and certain countries are hard to get,” he said. “When those stations come on the air, you have a pileup of people wanting to talk to them.”

He said after making contact, the hams exchange information cards, called QSL cards.

“She’s got books of those QSL cards,” he said. “She’s got them from countries that are no longer countries. She’s a very strong, intelligent, determined young lady who very much enjoys the hobby.”

Dora Anna’s amateur radio license is good until 2021.