110 and counting

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Brian Korthals/Daily Globe Johanna Sell and her children (from left) Arlo Sell, Marlene Engler, Twila Mattison and DuWaine Sell reminisce about growing up and Christmas on Saturday at the Sogge Memorial Home in Windom.

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• Grandma Sell’s date pinwheels

WINDOM — With a dry-erase marker in hand, Pat Sell wrote a message to her mother-in-law, Johanna Sell, Saturday morning, explaining that Christmas was just a week away. It was 33 degrees outside and there wasn’t any snow to cover up the brown grass.

Johanna read the words on the white board and nodded her head. It won’t be the first time she’s going to see a brown lawn on Christmas morning — even in Minnesota. Johanna will celebrate her 110th Christmas morning on Sunday, though she doesn’t remember her first Christmas. She was, after all, less than a month old.

On Saturday, Johanna’s four children and their spouses gathered around a table at the Sogge Good Samaritan Home in Windom to reminisce about the good old days, sharing stories about a mom who might very well be southwest Minnesota’s oldest living resident.

Johanna is considered a supercentenarian — a person who is at least 110 years old. According to a list of United States supercentenarians on Wikipedia, Johanna is the 62nd oldest in the country (including both verified and unverified individuals), and the third oldest in Minnesota.

Born Nov. 28, 1901 to Carl and Gertie (Scholtz) Stadtlander in Hardin County, Iowa, she moved with her family to Mountain Lake in 1907. Following marriage in 1937, she and her husband, William “Bill” Sell, farmed in Amo Township, 12 miles northwest of Windom. Together they raised four children there, but after Bill’s death at age 59, Johanna and Marlene — the youngest of the family — moved to Windom. Johanna remained in her own home until she was 98, and then resided in Heritage House assisted living in Windom.

While she’s no longer able to hear, Johanna has been rather healthy all through her life. About 25 years ago she suffered her first broken bone — a wrist that fractured after she got it caught in the wringer washing machine. More recently, she’s suffered a couple of small strokes. Her children say she doesn’t talk much anymore, perhaps because she can’t hear, but she does offer smiles to her family and caregivers.

Farm girl, farm wife

Johanna grew up with four brothers and a sister, and the family farmed in both Midway and Selma townships. After she married and moved to Amo Township, their four children — DuWaine and Arlo Sell, Twila Mattison and Marlene Engler — also were fortunate enough to grow up on the farm.

Some of the fondest memories of farm life were creating their own make-shift, make-believe farm out in the grove, Marlene said.

“We had to make our own fields … we made horse pens, cattle pens and a kitchen — with peach crates — and we baked mud pies,” she shared as her siblings laughed at the memory.

“We played cowboys and Indians,” chimed in Arlo.

Oh, they had their share of chores to do too. The boys helped feed the cattle and the girls had to gather the eggs. Their mom took care of the chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and guineas.

Marlene complained about having to pick eggs because of one particularly mean hen, and the boys shared recollections of their bike getting locked up to the windmill by Dad because they didn’t think they could get off the bicycle seat long enough to do chores.

Summer was always a busy time with Mom’s big garden.

“She did a lot of baking and canning,” Marlene recalled.

“Monday was always wash day,” Arlo added. “And Saturdays we went to town to get groceries.”

Johanna would take the week’s worth of eggs into the Storden grocery, and they’d collect enough money to buy the groceries they needed for the next week, Twila said.

After the groceries were purchased, the parents went visiting and the kids went to the movies — a 5- or 10-cent showing back in those days.

Christmas memories

“I remember one Christmas — we usually had our Christmas program on Christmas Eve and we figured we wouldn’t get much for Christmas — there was a doll under the Christmas tree when we got home. We had to share it,” Twila said to her sister, Marlene. “I was so excited we got a doll.”

While the sisters had to share a present, so to did the brothers. Arlo said one Christmas he and his older brother received a single-shot .22 rifle.

“We didn’t have much, and Christmases weren’t real big,” Arlo said.

The matriarch

Johanna worked hard to provide for her family, there’s no question about it as her children share stories of having to pump water from the cistern and heat it on the stove just to be able to wash clothes.

She watched three of her kids — Arlo, DuWaine and Marlene — make it through bouts of polio in 1952. All three of them had to spend time in hospitals in the Twin Cities, and Johanna kept busy caring for them when they returned. They were kept out of school from September through Thanksgiving that year.

After Johanna’s husband died and she moved to Windom, she went to work as a babysitter and earned extra money providing elder care to seniors — some younger than her.

Well into her 90s, Johanna continued to mow the lawn and shovel snow in the winter — until her children convinced her it was no longer safe for her to do such tasks. She also did embroidery, knitting and baking — her favorite Christmas cookie is the date pinwheel, which is printed at right.

On Nov. 27, many of Johanna’s extended family joined her in celebrating her 110th birthday. In addition to the four children, she has 15 grandchildren (the oldest is 50), 36 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren (the youngest is 2).

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