Longtime Sherwood resident reaches centenarian status

Theresa Moeller-Mallory has reached a milestone that few achieve in our society. Today, Oct. 4, is her 100th birthday.

“It’s a funny thing – you don’t think about it (your age) and then all of a sudden you’re there,” she said.

Theresa, who lives about 10 miles outside of Granton in the Sherwood area, still maintains an independent lifestyle. She lives in her own home and takes care of her adult son with Parkinson’s disease. She also cooks her own meals and drives a Chevy Spark with some “get up and go,” she said.

Although she has not had an easy life by any standard, Theresa has determined to stay optimistic and take life as it comes, an attitude that has helped her through many trying circumstances.

Theresa was born Theresa Ida Moeller to Adam and Nettie Moeller on Oct. 4, 1923, in Jackson City, Iowa. She had three older siblings, Earl, Lydia and Cecil, and two younger siblings, Axel and Susan. She is the last living sibling.

Her family moved to central Wisconsin when she was still a baby, settling not far from where Theresa lives now, in the town of Sherwood, by the Lutheran church on Highway 73. Her dad purchased 80 acres of property, which Theresa is proud to say still remains in the family, the land divided between three of her dad’s grandchildren.

From a humble beginning, Theresa remembers a time before the many conveniences of today, such as a washer and dryer, controlled heat and microwaves. As kids, Theresa and her siblings picked string beans and pickles as a cash crop. She remembers ordering groceries and clothes from the Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogue. The milkman would deliver their groceries.

Her dad made money by cutting wood and selling it, and making kindling.

The family didn’t stay in Sherwood for long. Before Theresa turned 10, the family moved back and forth to Iowa several times, traveling in a cattle truck with just a few possessions. She lived in several locations throughout Clark County and attended one-room schools, including Birdland Echo in the town of Sherwood, Riverside school by Neillsville and Audubon in the town of Sherwood.

“I had more teachers than I had grades; I moved that much,” said Theresa.

When Theresa was 10, her mother passed away and the family moved back to Clark County for good. Theresa’s dad built a log house for them, which was finished by the time Theresa was 11. There were just two rooms, the downstairs and upstairs. There were three beds upstairs with curtains dividing them.

“We had two stoves in there. In other words, we had the cook stove and the heater was right behind it, and that all went up through the stove pipe chimney. It wasn’t brick; just the stove pipe. Not very safe — we had to watch it so you didn’t have a chimney fire,” said Theresa.

In ninth grade, Theresa attended Granton High School. There was no bus route at that time and it was too far to walk, so she boarded with Fred and Susan Tyler. Her second year of high school, she stayed with the William Schmidtke family in town, and the last two years of high school, she stayed with the Chester Finnigan family.

Theresa kept busy with household chores for her host families and schoolwork. However, when she did have free time, she found many fun activities to do. She and her siblings spent many hours swimming and skating on Sherwood Lake. She also enjoyed rollerskating in Hatfield and at the Sherwood Town Hall, dancing at the Silver Dome and watching movies for 25 cents at the Neillsville theater. She learned to drive in an open meadow by Sherwood Park, now grown up with trees.

Theresa graduated in the Granton High School Class of 1941, a class of 30. She married Marvin Mallory the following year, on March 28, 1942. Marvin had graduated in 1936.

“The war was going on, so we rushed to get married because we thought he’d have to go into the service,” said Theresa.

The newlyweds lived in Granton in the old feed mill house by the railroad tracks, bought from Marvin’s mother. In 1942, Marvin bought the land where Theresa lives now and built a two-bedroom house out of lumber from the surrounding forest. They moved there in 1943 after the birth of Rochelle, their firstborn.

Soon their marriage was put to the test, when Marvin was called up to serve in the U.S. Army. On Dec. 27, 1944, Theresa received a telegram stating that her husband had been “slightly wounded” a month earlier in western Germany. After jumping in a foxhole, Marvin had his left thumb shot at and lost most of it. He spent a year in a hospital in California having surgery and recovering.

In the meantime, Theresa lived in Granton with Marvin’s mother.

“Of course, we had rationing, so we couldn’t drive a lot. Gasoline was rationed, food, sugar. Sugar was the hardest for us,” said Theresa.

Eventually Marvin returned and he and Theresa continued to expand their family. Their second child, Judith, was born in 1946, followed by three boys: Jack, Michael and Ken. There is a 20-year span between the oldest and the youngest child.

Marvin worked many places while the kids were growing up. He manufactured parts for machines and worked in factories in Beloit and Rockford, Ill. For several years, he went to work in Illinois and would come home a couple of weekends a month, while Theresa stayed home raising the kids.

They also lived in a mining town in Montana. “We got there in November and he left in January, because there was no work. He went to Salt Lake City and couldn’t find work, so he went on down to California. He had two sisters living there,” said Theresa.

Marvin got a job in Fontana, California, in the steel mill. He lived out of his car and worked to save up money until he was able to get a trailer. Then the family piled in the car and drove out there to join him. Soon they were able to save up enough money to rent a house, “but we didn’t have any furniture; we just had what we put in the car — a dish and spoon for each one of us, a couple kettles and canned venison that we canned in Montana,” said Theresa. “So you do what you gotta do.”

But then the steel strike of 1952 happened, leaving Marvin out of work again. So he returned to Montana to cut timber in a national park north of Livingston. They experienced the Yellowstone earthquake of 1959. Eventually, they moved back to Wisconsin and Marvin went to work in Illinois. In addition to her own kids, Theresa also had to watch her sister-in-law’s five kids for about nine months after her sister-in-law got sick and had to have surgery.

In 1965, when their youngest was 2, the family moved to Illinois, and the kids went to school in Byron. By the 1980s, the kids were all grown. There would be more challenges yet to come in Theresa’s life, however. In 1985, her son Michael passed away at age 28 from cancer. Marvin passed away in 1989 after suffering a massive heart attack at O’Hare Airport when he went to pick up some visiting family members.

“That was my biggest challenge, was getting along without having him to support me,” said Theresa.

She ended up taking a CNA course and in 1993, moved back to Wisconsin. She worked for Clark County Community Care providing in-home health care. After that, she provided private care in people’s homes when needed. She semi-retired at age 72, although she continued to work part-time at a cranberry marsh for two years.

After fully retiring, she volunteered for many years at the nursing home in Neillsville, making corsages for people’s birthdays and helping with the weekly music program for residents. She was part of the Sherwood Community Club, which made quilts for people monthly.

Into her later years, she has kept up with several interests. She likes to play dominoes with her niece and nephew. Patty and Roger Mallory, whenever she can.

Also, “I love to put puzzles together. I enjoy canning. I also used to sew a lot,” said Theresa.

She credits her involvement in 4-H as a child with teaching her how to can and sew. She has made many baby quilts. She also made her sister’s wedding dress and a quilt out of old winter coats. When she had a garden for feeding her family, she would can as many as 400 quarts of food for the winter.

She also likes to use Facebook or Zoom to stay in touch with her family members, of which there are many. She has nine grandchildren, plus more great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. Her oldest great-great grandchild is almost 20 years old. Besides grandchildren, she also has many nieces and nephews, as her brother had nine children, one sister had nine children and another sister had six children.

Living to a century old is not unheard of in Theresa’s family, as she has two cousins who lived to be almost 100.

“My dad had six brothers and six sisters, and a lot of them lived to be close to 100,” Theresa added.

Theresa had a few pieces of advice for how to live a long life.

“Keep busy. Try to think positive — I do. It’s like a lot of things — the tragedy of my husband dying suddenly in an airport, in spite of that, it worked out. We got everything done. It wasn’t all bad, in as much as I had family and friends to help me. Family and friends are very important when there’s a crisis, and I had my share of that.

“I always say, ‘If you can do something about something, do it. If you can’t, let God take care of it. Just leave it in His hands and you’ll survive. Because it’s no use in fretting about anything that you can’t do anything about. You just waste your time worrying.’” Theresa plans to celebrate her special day with a birthday party at the Granton Community Center on Saturday.

Theresa Moeller-Mallory