After 100 years, woman has reason to celebrate

After living through 17 presidential administrations, six major wars and a number of conflicts, Mary Elizabeth Trice had reason to celebrate Aug. 23.

Trice, born Aug. 23, 1904, celebrated her 100th birthday Saturday with friends and family at her granddaughter's Wasilla home.

Born Mary Elizabeth Casbeer to Emily Rose Crockett and Jim Casbeer in a small farmhouse on three square miles in Comanche County, Texas, Trice became the oldest of 13 children -- she had nine sisters and three brothers and helped raise two cousins. One sibling died shortly after childbirth.

"Before I was married I probably washed enough diapers to circle the world," Trice said. "We didn't have washers in them days, you washed clothes by hand."

Trice had a lot of responsibilities on the farm. As the oldest, she was often asked to look after her siblings. She also milked cows, fed hogs and chickens and helped her mother cook and clean.

Trice learned to cook and sew at the age of eight. It wasn't all work, though.

One of her favorite memories of growing up on the farm was that her father kept brood mares that hadn't been broken.

"We used to sneak out of the house on my mother and go down to the barn and ride these horses that hadn't been broke," Trice said. "They'd pitch us off and I'd say 'You better not cry or tell Mama that we've been riding.'"

Trice married Eddie Clinton Trice when she was 19 years old. She told her new husband that she wasn't going to have 12 children.

After a bout with measles and TB of the bone, which nearly cost Trice her leg, she and Eddie moved to Rising Star, Texas, in 1926. That is where Trice gave birth to her only daughter, Wanda Jean. Seven years later she gave birth to her son, Dwight Glynn.

At the time, Eddie worked in an oil field and Trice stayed home with the children and kept house.

For a few years in the 1930s, the Trices moved around Texas, from farm to farm.

They eventually settled in the Rio Grande Valley, where she ran a feed and seed store and Eddie drove trucks. While living there, Eddie bought a house and then left on a long haul.

He didn't come back until several months had passed. While he was gone, Trice painted the house, had indoor plumbing installed and had some trees planted in front of the house.

"When he got back he passed the house and said, 'Heck, I live back there somewhere,'" Trice said. "He got back and didn't even recognize his own house."

In 1946, they moved to San Angelo, Texas, where they owned and Trice managed a hotel for 34 years. The Plaza Hotel was a three-story building without an elevator, located in downtown San Angelo just behind city hall. The hotel had 20 guest rooms, with community bathrooms on each floor.

Trice did most of the cleaning at the hotel, some maintenance and dealt with guests. Along with the guests who stayed in the hotel, Trice's five grandchildren made the building their own personal playland, which she didn't mind because it meant she had some extra help.

"I remember making beds all my childhood," said Susan Crowder, Trice's granddaughter. "That's the reason I still make my bed every morning, because she taught me to."

In 1980, at the age of 76, Trice decided to retire. She sold the hotel and moved into a small house just behind it.

Much of her time in retirement was spent either on her yard or on sewing.

Trice would sew all kinds of things, but the one thing she was really known for were her handmade dolls. She made everything from the bodies to the clothes they wore.

Trice made her first doll from a corncob when she was 5 years old. Members of her family estimate that Trice has made more than 300 dolls over the years -- and many of those were crafted during her retirement.

Trice arrived in Alaska nearly 16 years later.

In 1996, she fell and broke her right hip.

The doctor had told her she shouldn't live on her own anymore, so she packed up, her family came to get her, and off she went to Alaska at the age of 92 to live with her daughter and granddaughter in the Valley.

One of Trice's goals in coming to Alaska was to fish from the Rio Grande to the Yukon. Big Lake was as far as she got, but was close enough for her.

Trice has outlived both of her children, many of her friends, all three husbands and most of her doctors. She has five grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren. She has countless friends and makes new friends all the time.

"She's an inspiration to everybody she meets, she's recovered from so much throughout her life," her granddaughter, Susan, said. "There were 85 people for her party Saturday, where did they all come from? Those are friends that she's made in the eight years she's been here."

Contact Michael White at mike.white@frontiersman.com.