Continuing to learn is Masterson's life goal, she said. Proving her point are the stacks of poems, journals chronicling her life, and reference materials scattered throughout her home.
Papers spill over two desks, one of which is the mainstay for her old IBM electric typewriter that her late husband, J.D., bought her years ago. A picture window renders a view of the road from her writing sanctuary, and three American flags are propped in the window - providing a constant reminder of loved ones who served in the military, including her father, husband, and husband's brother.
Her cozy home is nestled among trees right outside Webbers Falls. Inside, paintings and family photographs edge each other for space on the busy walls throughout her house. Her own artwork captures previous homes, downtown Webbers Falls, owls, and birds.
Behind her diminutive stature, silver hair, and wire-rimmed glasses lies Masterson's exuberant personality, and despite illness, she shows no signs of slowing down.
Masterson's career all started with the publishing of a poem in the Five-Star News, now the Muskogee County News. That poem spawned a column in 1975, and she has been a column writer for Your TIMES since 1979. She ceased writing for the Five-Star News, but stayed with Your TIMES. A spell of bad health prompted her to stop writing weekly columns, and she is now the monthly column writer of Sims News, aptly named for a schoolhouse near her home. She said her columns began as who visited whom, who attended church, and so on.
She said she began writing for Your TIMES after requesting to do so. As her payment, she said all she wanted was a newspaper subscription.
The first part of her column intertwines current events, happenings, people, places, while the second part is entitled "Mostly Helen" because Masterson said she found it was mostly about what was happening in her life, past and present. Her column ends in an original poem, one that is both thoughtful and pertinent to the topic preceding it.
Masterson had a book, entitled "Mostly Helen," made from 25 years of her columns, and in it she tells her life story.
Masterson said she grew up in the community of Shoemake, near Webbers Falls, and came from a farming family. Growing up, she lived down the road from her husband. "We knew we were going to get married some day," she said.
After getting married, she dropped out of high school as a junior so she could help her husband farm. She and her husband were married 47 years when he died.
After several years out of school and two babies who died in infancy, Masterson decided to go back to school to graduate. It took a year and a half for her to finish, after leaping to the top of her class and being named the valedictorian of her 1943 senior class at Webbers Falls.
Masterson said she wasn't working toward the title of valedictorian, and to this day she said she still feels guilty for taking it from the intended student, who came in second.
But Masterson never got the chance to give her graduation speech because of a horrible flood that swept through the area.
"They called us in June...lined us up and handed us our diplomas," she said. She said the reason she was so disappointed that there was no ceremony and because she didn't get to give her speech.
In high school Masterson said she became the poet of the school newspaper. She said she has written over 1,000 poems, some of which have been bound into books. She said she tried counting once, but gave up after 1,000.
After high school, Masterson traveled across the country visiting and living in various places while her husband was training to be a Marine.
She captured her travels and life through photographs, which she bound in albums and has given to her family.
Masterson also took several college courses in painting and one in journalism at Connors State College in Warner, but couldn't afford to finish. She said she always aspired to be a teacher, and even at 83, she still enjoys learning new things and passing that learning on to others.
"After I got to where I could afford it, I said phooey...I was getting on up there in age," she said.
Instead of college, Masterson stayed busy at home, planted a garden and raised three children, two of whom are still living. Her writing and painting ambitions came later in life.
Masterson is a person who recalls years by events and experiences in her life. Masterson remembers 1975 clearly, not for the year that her columns first appeared in a newspaper, but for the year her daughter died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 27. That tragedy is one that still causes her pain. She took time off from the columns, but she said she began writing again about a month later.
Through all her writing accomplishments, Masterson said she is most proud of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She has nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren
Masterson has written about her life in various other booklets, and she continues to write and design her own Christmas cards each year, with the inclusion of a poem.
This year's card is already complete since the list of recipients is so long.
"I can only type for a little while," Masterson said.
This year's card strays from the usual, and is about what the "X" in the shortened version of Christmas means. She had to use encyclopedias and dictionaries to aid in her work, and she points upward as the source of her ideas.
"I'm still learning," Masterson said.
