For her, it’s just a number

That centennial birthday snuck up on Helen Baringer like a holiday surprise.

“Well, they ask me how does it feel to be 100?” Baringer mused, sitting in her mother-in-law apartment Friday. “Well, I don’t know how it feels. I don’t feel 100. I’m in good health; I don’t have any bad things.”

But just in case she needs to be reminded — or the neighbors are curious — her daughter and son-in-law, Lisa and Daniel Nelson, have posted a huge “Happy 100th birthday” banner across their front porch and decorated their yard on Warner Avenue with signs displaying relics from 1923.

Baringer was born in Wisdom, Mont., on Nov. 16, 1923, to a family of 11 children. Her parents owned a cattle ranch and raised Herefords and Holstein milk cows.

“In them days it was tough,” she said. “We had plenty to eat, though, because we lived on the ranch.”

Her brothers helped milk the cows and the girls did all kinds of work around the home, including helping to raise their younger siblings.

Baringer said they were fed the milk and sold the cream.

“We sold the cream to the creamery (in Butte, Mont., about 40 miles away). We didn’t have one in Wisdom. We had to take that 10-gallon can of cream to the road and the stage that brought the mail in from Butte to Wisdom every day. And they were only there awhile and got the mail and whatever freight they had. So we had to have the can of cream down there in the road and they took it to the creamery.

“And I think, if I remember right, we got about nine dollars for 10 gallons of cream. That was way back when but that money bought our groceries and kept us (afloat), anyway.”

Baringer went through the eighth grade in Wisdom but dropped out before high school. She would have had to travel to Butte because Wisdom didn’t have a high school.

She stayed on the ranch and continued to help her parents, including tending a baby sister. Baringer said her father made a cozy little box bed on a sled and Baringer hauled her sister around the yard in that.

“I was 13 then,” she said. “I did everything for that kid except feed her.… She’s still close to me.”

She met her first husband, Kenneth Thomas, in one of the few locations in Wisdom where people could get acquainted.

“I met my husband in a bar. Well, that’s all there was in Wisdom. You called it a bar but they also had lunches but we never had any money to buy lunch. We ate at home.

“And they had a jukebox. The jukebox was really popular and you’d play all them western songs.”

She especially liked the music of Jim Reeves.

After dating for a few months, she and Thomas got married. She was 18. They were together for only a few months when he was drafted into the U.S. military during World War II.

Baringer, pregnant with their first child, moved back to Wisdom to live with her parents. Thomas was gone for four years and when he finally returned home the couple started to build their family. The older daughter, Kenna Marie, was 3 years old before she first met her father. Within a few years Diana and Doug were born.

Thomas went to work in a railroad tie plant in Butte and then started working in a phosphate mine. There he was was killed in an accident.

Alone with three young children, Baringer moved to Darby, Mont., where her brother lived on a ranch and had a son, Howard, who stayed with her to attend high school.

One of the neighbor kids was a friend of Howard’s and, after meeting Baringer, the boy went home and told his widowed father, Lyle Baringer: “I think you would like this lady.”

Their first date, Helen and Lyle were crammed into an automobile with a pack of kids at a drive-in movie. It just seemed to be the right match and before long they were married.

The family lived in Darby where Lyle ran a backhoe business until he retired. They were married 46 years before he died at age 88.

After Lyle’s death Baringer continued to live in Hamilton and enjoyed bowling and playing bingo. Finally, at age 95, she gave up her car and her house and moved to Lewiston to live with her youngest daughter, Lisa.

She continues to socialize at the senior lunches each week at the Orchards United Methodist Church. She has a driver who picks her up and escorts her there.

“I don’t want to stop doing that because then, well, what else have you got when you’re 100 years old?” she said.

She doesn’t attend Mass but a neighbor brings her communion each week and she watches church services on TV.

Besides her four children, Baringer has 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren. One grandson came all the way from Florida to help her celebrate her 100th.

Baringer said the secret to a long, happy life is to live moderately.

“No drinking, no smoking, a little of this or that. Don’t overeat,” she advised. “I think, just do things moderately, and then, of course, I think I’ve got some good genes.”

Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.