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When you turn 100 years old, you have seen and experienced a lot of things in your life. Evelyn Plageman turned 100 on September 10, 2012.
During her lifetime, she has lived through the terms of 18 Presidents from William Howard Taft to Barack Obama. Evelyn says her favorite Presidents were Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
Evelyn still votes. “They send me the paper (mail in ballot) and I vote,” she said.
She has experienced the years of the Great Depression and World War II. When I asked her what it was like to live through the Depression, she said, “I was so busy working; I didn’t have time to think about it.”
During World War II, one of her brothers went off to fight in the war. During those years, Evelyn and her husband Chester Plageman were busy raising their family inOttawa,Minnesota.
Evelyn and Chester were married February 18, 1932. He worked on farms, a mink ranch and for an insulation company.Chesterpassed away in 1984.
They raised five children, Thomas, Beverly, Robert, Don and Virginia.
Evelyn was born inBagley,Iowa. She grew up on a farm where she did a “little bit of everything.”
The farm raised corn, grain and potatoes. Her parents were hard workers and she learned to work at an early age. She attended school until the seventh grade and then went to work babysitting and working in the family garden.
She never stopped working. Besides raising five kids, she worked in the cornfields, in factories and even on a mink ranch. On the ranch, she said she did everything from feeding the mink and cleaning their stalls to having to scrape the fat off of the fur pelts.
Evelyn worked on the assembly line at Hughes Aircraft in California in 1957. She worked in a cannery and for Green Giant for 17 years.
In 1977, she moved to Arizona. She lived in Mesa and went to work in the kitchen at a school cafeteria.
Evelyn remembers driving wagons and then cars. She drove until she was 90 years old. She was around before the invention of television and the electronic age. She told me about having an old wind up phonograph (Victrola record players).
Now she listens to the radio and can play CDs. Country western music is her favorite. On television, she likes to watch game shows and baseball.
The Arizona Diamondbacks are her favorite team. She said she used to like the Dodgers before she moved toArizona.
In 1992, Evelyn moved to San Manuel. Her daughter Bev and son-in-law Russ Dollard live next door. Evelyn said that ‘Bev and Russ help do all my work.”
“I’m just wearing out that’s all, after 100 years it’s just about time to wear out.”
Evelyn still does her own cooking and tends to her flower garden, weather permitting. When Evelyn was asked how it feels to be turning 100 years old, she responded, “It’s just another birthday. I just keep trying to do what is right.”
She attributes her longevity to the fact that she’s“just too ornery to die!” She then added, “Just keep going and hard work. Let go of the past, go for what’s now.”
On Sat. Sept. 9, 2012, Evelyn was surprised by family and friends at the Living Word Chapel in Oracle where her birthday was celebrated.
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