Marjory Holtz turned 100 years old recently with a few celebrations held and a few to come at the Waterford at Park Falls.
Holtz was born in Port Edwards in 1924, on her grandparents farm, much of which still stands today. She is the first of her family, immediate or extended, to have lived to age 100. Her mother lived to age 94, and her only sibling, an elder brother who was a doctor in California, has since passed.
When asked if she had an idea about why she lived so long, or perhaps held a secret for longevity, she said no. “I don’t know,” Holtz said.
“I do a lot of reading and like doing puzzles,” she said. “I play bingo every day.”
Some of the puzzles are hard and she enjoys the challenge. But her sight isn’t the same and it is becoming harder to read. She recalls being told of macular degeneration over 20 years ago after cataract surgery. It hasn’t really been a concern until now.
“I just got my new glasses last year and now I have to get new ones again,” Holtz said.
It is taking some getting used to in terms of settling in at an assisted living facility. She was still living alone at age 98 and drove herself to Park Falls when she moved here in 2022 to be close to her only living child, Donna, who lives in Glidden. But Holtz is no stranger to the area.
Holtz, her maiden name is Oilschlager, was just 14 years old when her father was killed at the NEPCO Paper Mill in Port Edwards, where she started work just three years later.
At age 20 she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps in 1944 and completed her basic training and cooking school at the WAC Training Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After a two week stop in Des Moines, Iowa, she was put on the train to Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Holtz was a cook for her fellow female soldiers. On weekends the enlisted men were invited to the mess hall.
“They’d come and eat,” she said. “There was a lot of people to feed.”
When she had a chance to get away she would go to Sante Fe.
“Then I got married to a soldier,” Holtz said. “We were at Los Alamos and he got transferred down to Sandia Base near Albuquerque.”
The couple were transferred to Germany after the war. They were stationed in Bad Tölz and later at Lenggries. She recalled traveling with a friend on the train through the Bavarian mountains to Munich.
“We’d do our shopping and come back,” she said. “We would ride on the train for literally nothing and had a compartment.”
The couple adopted two German boys, Gary and John, who were both raised in the United States and one later served in the Navy and the other was a Marine. One would later live in Park Falls and the other in Ashland. Both have since passed away.
After Germany the family was transferred to Fort Hood, Texas. That is where Donna was born and a short time later the family was back overseas to England and then back to Germany.
“I couldn’t follow him right away,” she said. “I had to wait a couple months because my daughter was too young, just 2 months old.”
The couple would end up divorcing and Holtz returned to Port Edwards to work at the Nekoosa paper mill. She recalled having several odd jobs in the mill that was making notebook paper at the time.
She remarried and the couple bought the Lorning Resort on Gordon Lake around 1970. It’s no longer in operations, she said.
“It was just for a couple years and then somebody wanted to buy it, so we sold it,” she said. “He gave us a good price.”
Even after serving as an Army cook, Holtz said she didn’t really know much about cooking until she was a resort owner and had to create a menu.
“I didn’t cook before I came up here,” she said. “I learned by myself and had a big oven with a grill. I was famous for my roasted chicken and prime rib, and poor man’s lobster, which I never heard of before, but then it really went over.”
She recalls that her sister-in-law who ran a bar in Plainfield, once showed up unannounced with a bus full of people. The group stayed at the resort and another friend from Wisconsin Rapids used the occasion to play his concertina.
“Of course, that bar wasn’t very big, but they had a good time,” Holtz said.
At around the same time, her in-law parents had bought a motel on State Highway 13 between Gliddon and Butternut. The husband suddenly passed away and so they took over the hotel.
“It wasn’t big enough to live on, I mean, I think we had five rooms,” she said. “I can’t even remember the name.”
To make ends meet, Holtz went to work for the Conners veneer mill in Butternut. She operated drills and saws to make parts for cupboards.
“That’s where I lost my hearing, with those high-pitched saws,” she said. “We didn’t have no protection except cotton.”
The last adventure with her second husband was a brief stint in the log home business, she said. After a painful divorce she went back to Nekoosa.
One of the happiest times of Holtz’ life was meeting her third companion, Don Walrath, in 1991. He was a widow, and she was recently divorced. Neither wanted to marry but were happy together for 30 years
“We hit it off just like that, a real match,” Holtz said.
Walrath worked for the Nekoosa mill and was the town fire chief for many years.
“They called him Rock,” she said. “When he was in high school he played football. They said it was like hitting a rock. So that’s how he got his name.”
They fished a lot. Walrath had land in the St. Germain and Woodruff area and they would park a camper for the summer. The families would bring their campers to visit.
“We always had a good time,” Holtz said. “He’d cook by the open fire with a great big frying pan.”
Walrath had a stroke in 2001 that left him paralyzed on his right side and he lost his speech. She knew him long enough to understand him and continued to care for him until a fall led to full time care.
It was during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said. They were both quarantined and she could not visit him until he was in hospice and he died just two days later at age 89 in 2020.
“I was happy with him,” Holtz said. “We always had a good time and got along very good. In fact, his kids thought a lot of me. His daughter-in-law called me her mother-in-law whenever she’d introduce me to somebody.”
Most Popular
Comments / 0