Jamestown resident celebrates 102nd birthday
Dec. 12—JAMESTOWN — The key to living longer than a century is not going out and drinking every Saturday, according to Florence Maurer, who celebrated her 102nd birthday Friday, Dec. 9.
"I didn't go drinking every Saturday night," she said. "I stayed home, so I got good health. ... I didn't go out nightclubbing and raising hell although I like that a little bit. I was a pretty clean-cut kid when I was growing up."
Maurer, a Jamestown resident, celebrated her birthday Friday with friends and family at SMP Health — Ave Maria. She was surprised at how many people attended the party.
Maurer grew up around Pingree, North Dakota, and also spent time in Jamestown and Medina, North Dakota. Maurer's mother died before she turned 4 years old.
"I was raised by four tough brothers," she said.
Maurer was the third child among her siblings, and she didn't have any sisters. She said she has outlived all her brothers — two who served in the U.S. Army and two who served in the U.S. Navy.
Maurer remembers growing up with her father and four brothers. She said they attended a country school and would walk in snow banks to get there.
When she was in sixth grade, she said she was the only girl in the class with all boys and a male teacher.
"That was exciting," she said. " ... I got kind of a little bit disgusted. I'd go home and there was nothing but my dad and boys and when I went to school I had nothing but boys."
Maurer said she had girlfriends who she attended dances with in other smaller towns.
"We went to Windsor. Wherever they had a dance, we went," she said. "We had a good life. I always had lots of fun. We always went out to different places (and) went to the smaller towns where they'd have something going on.
She said she spent lots of time with her grandma who lived in Jamestown. Maurer later was raised by her "mean" aunt in Medina where her aunt worked for the U.S. Postal Service.
"I had to do all the work at home and mow the grass," she said, referring to living with her aunt. "She had a husband but he didn't do any of that. He was always working so it wasn't easy."
After graduating from school in Medina, she said she worked at restaurants.
She was working at a restaurant when she met her husband, who was from Arthur, North Dakota. He came from Arthur to work on the railroad.
"One morning, I looked at him and I said, 'That's the guy I was dancing with,'" she said. "He came in the restaurant to eat breakfast, so I started talking to him. Then just like that he asked me out and we started going together and that was it."
She got married in 1945, and they had five children — Charles Maurer Jr., James Maurer, Jacqueline Wanzer, Joan Connell and Mary Jane Ingstad.
"I married a railroad man and my grandma thought that was wonderful because she liked to go on the train to Fargo to see her daughter," she said.
They moved to Fargo around 1955 so her husband could run a passenger train that went from Fargo to Mandan. In 1972, they moved back to Jamestown with their three youngest daughters. She said they moved back to Jamestown so her husband could work on freight trains again.
Maurer said she worked mostly in restaurants and took care of kids for the Catholic welfare service. She said she liked infants and took care of them so she could stay home and take care of her own children as well.
"That way, I got a little bit of extra money," she said.
She said she worked at a very young age. When she was living with her aunt, Maurer got a job while while her aunt was on vacation.
"When she got back home, she didn't have no hired help," she said.
For others to live as long as her, she said to not go to the bar on Saturday.
"Go to the bar only for a short, short time," she said.
