The longest-living graduate of Limestone County’s only all-black high school, Trinity High, has died in California, and locals will gather to honor her life Saturday.

Caulyne Coble Bramlette was a member of the Class of 1932 and Trinity’s oldest graduate when she died May 3. She was 104 years old.

A memorial service will be held 11 a.m. Saturday at Trinity Congregational Church in Athens, where Bramlette was baptized as a child. Bramlette was such an avid supporter of the church and the Athens-Limestone Community Association that the family has asked for friends and loved ones to donate to the organizations in her memory.

ALCA is currently working to preserve and restore Trinity High School. Donations can be mailed in the form of a check to ALCA, P.O Box 1476, Athens, AL 35612.

Donations to the church can be sent to Trinity Congregational Church, 722 Brownsferry St., Athens, AL 35611.

In a statement on their Facebook page, ALCA said it owes a debt of gratitude to Bramlette, who asked people to donate to the organization instead of giving her birthday gifts on her 100th and 102nd birthdays.

ALCA also posted a passage from “Holding the Fort,” a book written by Charlotte Fulton and published by ALCA about Trinity School. Bramlette was one of less than 2,000 students who graduated from the school before it was closed in 1970 after court-ordered desegregation.

In the book, Fulton details Bramlette’s life as a student and eldest child who dreamt of a medical career, “but for a young black Southern woman in 1932, becoming a medical doctor was hardly a realistic aim.”

Instead, Fulton wrote, Bramlette’s parents saved up just enough to send her to Tennessee State University for two years. She taught in a one-room school in Pulaski, Tennessee, before returning to the university to graduate magna cum laude.

Bramlette returned to Athens with a son, her degree and her husband away fighting in World War II. She taught English and social studies to junior high students at Trinity, then returned to Pulaski to teach at Bridgeforth High School.

“In 1956, grieving over the death of her son in an automobile accident, Caulyne decided to seek out the best school system she could find — and the highest-paying one,” Fulton wrote. “She studied at Pepperdine University and taught in California for a year, saving money to return to Pulaski to teach there.”

Bramlette returned to California some time later, living with her daughter in the Los Angeles area during the school year and returning to her husband and father in Pulaski each summer. With 25 years under her belt, Bramlette retired in 1981.

Her ashes will be buried between her husband and son in Pulaski in a private ceremony after the memorial service.