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Celebrating a life across 3 centuries - With a sense of style, Sequim woman ready to turn 110 today By
LISA STIFFLER May 27, 2003
SEQUIM, WA-- A day shy of 110, Eva Fridell is just the kind of woman that you'd hope she'd be. She's funny and gracious, with a sense of style and a streak of irreverence. She's never eaten fast food but also never worked out and doesn't drink milk. Schnapps and Irish coffee, well, that's another story. In a Christmas photo from a decade ago, she kicks out a leg for a photo -- she was always proud of her gorgeous gams. She remembers events from 1896. "I can remember being 3," said Fridell, her head bobbing slightly. "I remember crying in the morning for momma." Today Eva Fridell -- possibly the oldest person in the state and among the oldest in the country -- celebrates her 110th birthday. She doesn't have pat answers to the cliche questions: What's the secret to longevity, the key to a good life? Why should 11 decades be distilled into a sound bite, anyway? Rather, lessons can be gleaned from who Fridell was and is. Born in Vancouver, B.C., in 1893, Fridell grew up in the Puget Sound area. Her father was a sea captain, her teetotaling mother a men's tailor. The two didn't last, and her earliest memory is of being left with her two sisters and one brother at an orphanage in Poulsbo. She spent eight years at the Martha and Mary Children's Home, a Lutheran orphanage where she lived when her divorced mother left for Alaska during the gold rush. Life was hard but not intolerable. Each Christmas the children would get a single orange in their stocking. Fridell never ate hers, opting instead to keep it under her pillow, savoring the fragrance until it was rotten. She attended Denny School in Seattle after her mother returned. At the turn of the 19th century, after-school hours were not filled with soccer practice or ballet. Fridell went home, trotted upstairs to the bedrooms to tidy up, make the beds and empty the chamber pots (though her language is more colorful). Fridell still has booklets of school essays in elegant curving script unmatched by today's children, whose penmanship is warped perhaps by keyboards and GameBoys. She wrote poems about snails, composed Christmas songs and cut photos from newspapers of noteworthy events. She's sorry never to have gone to college. Lacking money, she never went further than eighth grade. But she's been a student forever. She loved Shakespeare and Longfellow and had a penchant for memorizing poems and plays. When she traveled, she wanted to see and take in everything. She studied maps and guided family trips. When she was just a girl with thick auburn hair, a handsome Swedish boy moved next door to her family. By 17, Fridell was married to the young man named Louie who later went by the nickname Pete. "Thank you," she replied when complimented on her beautiful wedding photo. "No makeup. And I did my own hair." The satiny wedding dress has slightly puffed sleeves and pleats down from the shoulders with a braided trim. Her curled hair is piled up and tamed with a headband. She always loved flowers and holds a massive bouquet of roses. The year was 1910. Fridell is still beautiful. Her blue eyes are magnified behind glasses as thick and curved as a slice off a pool ball. Her snowy hair is coiffed and her outfit complete with a pale purple scarf. Her hearing is bad, forcing visitors to shout in clear, slow words to be understood. She lived on her own until she was 106 in a Sequim apartment complex for seniors. A fall forced her to move in with her grandson and his wife in their nearby home. Fridell had three children -- two daughters who are still living in the state, and a son, who recently died. Fridell's half-sister also is living. She has five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and 10 great-great-grandchildren. [Note: the reference to survivors has been corrected since this story was originally published.] Daughter Jean Saunders, 78, remembers her mother's terrific Swedish meatballs and immaculate garden. Fridell was a homemaker and helped her husband run his laundry business when they lived in Omak. The stories that she and her family members tell paint a picture of a cheeky, stubborn, caring and independent woman. When her husband of 68 years died, she packed her bags for Europe, Africa and Asia. In her later 80s, she went to Hawaii with her daughter, traveling on her own to the smaller islands. "She had the cutest darn swimsuit on," said Saunders, who lives in Port Angeles. One day at the pool, "she was standing there, kind of posing. She told the bartender, 'I want my mai tai right there when I get out.' " To celebrate a life that's spanned 20 presidents and chunks of three centuries, Fridell is having a party today with her immediate family. The ice cream cake won't have a candle for every year -- one, or maybe 10, will do. "Mom was kind of a person who lived every day for the day. She never worried. That's one of the things that kept her alive," Saunders said. "She never let anything bother her." |
