MOULTRIE — At 98, Nadine Caldwell is still a spitfire.

She lives alone, still drives to wherever she wants to go and she still remembers the days when nursing was more instinct and suitable for only for the hardy of soul.

And Caldwell is made of hardy stuff. She chalks up her long and active life to daily choices that, dare say, many would be hard pressed to follow.

“I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink coffee, and I don’t eat chocolate,” she said. “But I allow myself one Co-Cola a day, and my doctor says there ain’t no need in rocking the boat.”

Caldwell was honored Tuesday night at Colquitt Regional Medical Center’s Nurses Day Celebration at Moultrie Technical College as the county’s “most seasoned nurse.” And she’s the spicy sort, not hesitant to dole out a barb or two to get her point across.

Caldwell grew up a Howell in her native Norman Park. She married young and left school but later achieved her high school diploma and even a year at Norman College. Caldwell knew she had to go to work, she said, when her husband, Harvey, was drafted into World War II.

“He had overnight to determine which branch of service he would go in,” she said.

Her husband died Feb. 17, 1944, but she got his body back to bury a year later. They didn’t have children, and she never remarried.

Nurses were needed in town at the time. Nora Manning, administrator of Vereen Memorial Hospital, came looking for Caldwell’s sister Lillian, who had worked with her before. Manning recruited Caldwell into nursing and away from the business courses she was taking to become a secretary.

“I had never had done any kind of work, and I didn’t know what Mrs. Manning wanted me to do,” she said.

“Nurses weren’t getting nothing but having to do all that dirty work,” she said, adding that her other sister, Norman, was also a nurse. “They get now as much in one hour as we got in a month.”

In 1944, Harvey Caldwell died in the service of his country at age 37. Nadine Caldwell took up the flag at home tending to the wave of servicemen’s families who came in the doors of old Vereen Memorial Hospital. Spence Field air base opened in 1941 and over the span of the war had trained nearly 6,000 pilots before it closed in 1945 and was reactivated in 1951 during the Korean conflict. Caldwell was there in the middle of it all.

Her training consisted of some courses at the Carnegie library and then on-the-job training at the old hospital. She was a nurse for the next 15 years.

Even as an operating room nurse, Caldwell at that time earned $25 a month, she said. On the plus side, they were allowed to live at the hospital and eat free.

“We couldn’t afford to buy but so many uniforms, and we’d have to wash them out at night,” she said.