Clarkston woman turning 100, and she’s ready for Round 2

If there is a theme to Carol Lanier’s life, it’s that she has few — if any — regrets.

Lanier turns 100 today and if given the option, she wouldn’t change a thing.

“I don’t feel like I’m that old,” she said while eating cake during an early birthday party Friday at Evergreen Estates in Clarkston where she lives. “I feel like a little teenager.”

She was born and raised in Los Angeles. After school she became a nurse and embarked on a career helping care for people while working for individual doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and in private practice.

It’s a job she loved.

“I wish I could do it again,” she said.

After she married her first husband, the city girl traded nursing and Los Angeles for farm life and motherhood in Illinois. She had seven children including two sets of twins and adapted well to life in the country, even if it was a bit of a culture shock.

“It was different,” she said. “I’d never been around farm animals before and it scared me to death. But I wouldn’t change it for anything. If I could do it again, I would. It’s just different than city life.”

Her kids, of course, are all grown now and “scattered from here to high water.”

She married two more times over the course of her life and eventually ended up in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley.

“I must have been too hard on my men. I lost all three of them,” she quipped.

Her stepson Roger Lanier and his wife Darlyn Lanier and the residents and staff at Evergreen Estates helped her celebrate. Gifts included several skeins of yarn. She’s been an avid crocheter for most of her life.

“I love to crochet — Afghans mostly — ever since I was about 14.”

Fishing is another favorite pastime.

“I’m a fisherman from way back,” she said. “I don’t care if it’s in the ocean or in a creek as long as I’ve got a pole in my hand, I’m happy.”

So what’s the secret to living a long life that is so good you’d do it all over again? Lanier isn’t sure but said she followed a time-tested strategy.

“I guess I just lived a good, clean life. I didn’t do drugs, or smoke or drink or anything like that.

I just worked all my life.”

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com.