A CENTURy OLD!

Happy 100th Birthday Great Aunt Irma!!

This is john's brother Bob Aunt Irma and John at her birthday
celebration. We had a great time. Irma is a delight and always has been.
In her lifetime she has gone from a horse and buggy to an airplane.

She has lived through world wars, the depression, real estate booms, the wright brothers flying the first airplane to sputniks to america landing on the moon, people flying around the world and adding alaska and hawaii to the US. She has been through 20 plus presidents, the deaths and births of her three children, her spouse (after celebrating 50 yrs together), her parents and 5 siblings.

She grew up on a farm without electricity or indoor plumbing. She said the best thing ever invented was indoor plumbing and the doing away with the outhouse and bathing in the creek.

She was a little girl when the first motion pictures came to the screen, the first black and white tv's when she was a bit older, she watched loved ones die before the erradication of smallpox, diptheria and tuberculosis found a cure, add in polio vaccines and the discovery of penicillins.

Cornflakes was a big thrill as well as frozen food and freezers. Model fords, the car radio, band aids and the modern zipper all were new inventions in her early adulthood. Scotch tape, teflon, stainless steel, the telephone and infamous party lines were a novelty.

Irma grew up on a farm and married a farmer and stayed in farming until her husband's death. She was also a 'modern' woman and got a job as an x ray technician. She worked at the hospital I took my nurses training at. I knew her long before I ever met her great nephew at a local dance club.

Aunt Irma still lives in her own home and cooks and cleans for herself.

She is getting hard of hearing and is losing her vision but still has 6 art students from her church. She is a beautiful aritist and has an artist's soul. Gardening is her past time.

When asked how she got to be so old she said "you don't take up knitting when you retire." Perplexed others didn't understand. She continued,"What I am saying is MOVE, pick up a basket ball or croquet mallet or tennis racquet, bowl do whatever it takes to keep moving every day."

So today I hope you are all moving to your own ryhthm.