At 101, She’s Been Growing Old Playfully

Among the gifts Helen Quackenbush received on her birthday before last was a memory book bearing messages from family and friends who gathered for the occasion. Some are addressed, “Dear Gigi.”

Gigi?

“When Shauna was little, she had trouble saying Great Grandma Quackenbush,” Gary Stapley explains. Shauna, now 17, could manage the first letters, and the nickname stuck.

Helen Quackenbush’s most recent birthday, on May 2, was her 101st. She took it in stride. Once again, Gary, who turned 46 on May 4, took his grandmother to the Smokehouse for their annual birthday lunch, just the two of them, a ritual that began when he turned 21.

Once again, Helen Quackenbush ordered a martini.

Longevity isn’t its own reward. A life well lived is judged more by quality than quantity. The common goal is plenty of both, which is why, on this Mother’s Day, it seems appropriate to spend a little quality time with Helen Quackenbush of North Hollywood--mother of two, grandmother of three, great-grandmother of 12, great-great-grandmother of two. (They’re babies now, but will they call her Gigigi?)

She’s a cheerful woman who has lived in the same house on Hartsook Avenue since 1939. No, she says, she is not related to that other Quackenbush, California’s insurance commissioner. She seems mildly amused that a newspaper reporter would want to interview her. What’s another birthday?

“I just grow old as I go along,” she says. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”

Her granddaughter Nancy in Michigan is part of the reason for the fuss. When she read about a contest asking Americans over the age of 50 to write “the letter of a lifetime” for future generations, Nancy urged her grandmother to share her formula for living long and well. Not only was Helen Quackenbush chosen as one the winners, but publicists singled out her contrarian advice to promote the book “Healthy Aging: Inspirational Letters from Americans” (Rutledge Books Inc.).

This is what Helen Quackenbush wrote:

I am 100 years old and still going strong! I live in my own home and still exercise daily by walking three times around my badminton court, three times a day. I still drink a martini when out for dinner, and no one can tell me I won’t live longer for not eating my vegetables. . . . I never did like them.

Young people today need to take time for themselves. If you are not happy with yourself, you can’t be as healthy as possible. I’ve lived and grown with my children and grandchildren, been there for them when they needed me, and waited on the sidelines while they learned from their own mistakes. I know I grew stronger from each experience, and I believe they did too. Through all these years, happiness seemed to help bring me good health. My belief is being happy is healthy and with good health you have a solid rock for your life’s foundation.

To that she adds this thought: “I don’t believe in worrying about anything unless you have to.” In other words: Don’t worry, be happy.

She was born in 1896 on a farm outside Albany, Minn. One night some 20 years later, her life changed on a dance floor in Minneapolis. It was there she met a young man named Albert Quackenbush.

They married and his work as an electrical contractor took him west, and the couple arrived in the Valley in the late 1930s. Their children Dona and James still live here.

One night in 1960, Albert took Helen out dancing at the Elks Lodge. That night, Albert collapsed with a fatal heart attack. Even then, it was a comfort recalling how Albert used to say that when he died, he hoped it happened on the dance floor.

Dona’s son Gary remembers how his grandmother busied herself with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Well into her 70s she’d play badminton with him and his cousins.

Many years later, he would drop Shauna off to spend a day with her Gigi. Returning several hours later that day, he walked through the door and discovered bedsheets stretched over chairs. “Look, Daddy! We built a tent!” Shauna proudly announced.

“My grandmother was in her upper 80s,” he says, “and she was crawling around under that tent.”

The bond between Shauna and Gigi has always been special, the family says. Shauna has often written about her great-grandmother for class assignments. Shauna was born 20 years to the day--and almost to the minute--after her Great-Grandpa Quackenbush died; family folklore holds that he must have arranged the timing.

Eleven years ago Gary videotaped a conversation with his grandmother for posterity. Of all the things she’d witnessed, he asked her, what amazed her the most?

He was expecting her to say something like man landing on the moon. But nothing amazed her more, she told him, than seeing the sonogram of Shauna in the womb.

Her grandson finds himself thinking that he’ll need to make another Helen Quackenbush video. It’s not as if the years haven’t taken their toll, he says. But after she broke a hip at 89, she rebounded so strongly that doctors would introduce her to younger patients discouraged by the injury.

She’s always done what she was physically able to do, her grandson says. Age itself is never an excuse. “She never thinks, ‘Oh, I’m old and old people shouldn’t do that,’ ” Gary says. “The glass is always half-full, it’s never half-empty.”

A transition here to her fondness for martinis is unavoidable.

The truth is, she doesn’t drink that often. She doesn’t smoke that often either. She used to have a single cigarette on New Year’s Eve, but kicked her one-pack-every-20-years habit some time ago.

The martinis--she says she prefers them dry--are for special occasions. Birthdays, Mother’s Day, anniversaries. She’s looking forward to another party next month, when Dona and her husband, Dean, celebrate their golden wedding anniversary.

“That,” she says, grinning, “is where the martinis come in.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at [email protected] Please include a phone number.