104 and still going

“Come on in and sit down,” Lucia Althoff said to each person as they made their way into the dining room at Fieldcrest Care Center in Hayfield last week. Althoff, known to everyone as
”Gramma Gua,” was the honored guest as she celebrated her 104th birthday on Thursday, and she was clearly enjoying the surprise that had awaited her when she went to the dining room early in the afternoon.
Good-naturedly and proudly referring to herself as a “Pole from South Dakota,” she said she had left the family farm at age 11 to help her recently widowed Aunt Mary raise her seven children.
After growing up, she said, she lived in several different communities, including Chicago where she worked at the Mars candy factory. She said she worked there for 12 years and “I still like it (the candy)”
At the factory, her daughter Pat Norlin added, her mother worked on the assembly line and it was her job to put the swirl on each piece of candy and she is still able to demonstrate the hand motion notion to accomplish that task.
After her mother’s marriage, Norlin said, she lived in Brainerd and Owatonna before moving to Dodge Center in 1950. She stayed in her home in Dodge Center until she was 100 years old when she moved to assisted living at Prairie Meadows. She made the move to Fieldcrest in May of 2019.
During her years in Dodge Center, she did a variety of jobs including working as a hairdresser and at the canning factory in the city while raising four children.
“I learned a lot in all those years,” Althoff said. “I learned how to do hair and had a beauty shop in my kitchen.”
She also learned that her friends, and even some youngsters she did not know, were eager to help her celebrate her special day.
Those who came to visit on her birthday were treated to a piece of cake from two birthday cakes, one a white cake and one chocolate.
In addition to the many cards brought by those who stopped by, her room at Fieldcrest was also decorated by a birthday card on a large sheet of yellow poster board and signed by all the kindergarten students at Triton Elementary School.
Kindergarten teacher Katie Macrafic got the idea for the card when she learned Althoff’s birthday was approaching because she had taught both of her great-grandchildren in kindergarten. After her own class has finished the card, Macrafic decided it needed to be shared and before the afternoon was over all four kindergarten classes had signed the yellow card.
For her part, Althoff attributed her long life, at least in party, to the “shot of wine” she insists on every afternoon at 5. Norlin added that a piece of chocolate at 3 p.m. each day is also a part of her mother’s routine.