Volunteer for life: Wasilla woman celebrates her 102nd birthday by continuing to give back

WASILLA — Carlene Sanders celebrated her 102nd birthday on March 29. On June 22, she will do what she’s done for the last 30 years and help raise money for Wasilla Area Seniors Incorporated, where she lives and volunteers her time, in the Miles for Meals on Wheels event.

Sanders loves baking, baseball, and has found a family at WASI, where she has been for 12 years.

“I’ve been a volunteer I guess all my life,” Sanders said.

Sanders’ greatest love is helping the community she has adopted. Sanders was born in Arkansas in 1917 and lived all over the country. Sanders spent time in Missouri, working in an atomic plant and as a bullet inspector in Washington during World War II, and settled in Alaska in 1948. She was married at 16 years old.

“I was born in Arkansas and I was raised to work on the farm. We got out there and we did hoeing the cotton and the corn and sorghum and ribbon cane and stuff. To be an old Arkansas girl, I’ve done quite well,” Sanders said.

She and her husband began building their retirement home in Settlers Bay in 1979 and moved in the next year. Sanders quickly began looking for opportunities to serve her community and easily found opportunities to contribute.

“I’ve always been hyper. I just kind of put myself into whatever. If I volunteer, it’s a job to me,” Sanders said. “I sold tickets, so many I mean it’s cold out there too sitting in front of the grocery store.”

Sanders’ goal is to beat her fundraising record of $9,200 for the Miles for Meals on Wheels, fighting senior hunger in the Mat-Su. The Miles for Meals on Wheels 5K fun run, walk, and roll is June 22 at 11 a.m. at WASI. Sanders is not throwing a barn-burner for her 102nd birthday party, but began a new tradition of serving the community with friends at the ripe old age of 101 with the quilt raffle. Last year, Sanders said that at her birthday party, she would like to raffle off a queen sized, ‘bright and cheery’ quilt. Mary Wilber and Martha Fenger completed the quilt, which will be raffled off on the day of the 5K. While Sanders spends some time in Arizona and some time in Alaska, she calls WASI home.

“When I was young I loved to dance. I wish I could now. In fact for my 100th birthday, an old friend of mine, he grabbed me was going to dance with me. He was good and strong but he had started having little problems and when we stumbled I said that’s enough or we’ll both be on the floor,” Sanders said.

Sanders says that her 90th birthday party was her favorite.

“I just had my hair done, I thought I was going someplace, I don’t know where and when he turned around I said oh my god,” Sanders said.

Sanders was on her way to Peking Chinese Restaurant, her favorite restaurant, when she was brought to WASI where friends, family, and even the owner of the restaurant had gathered to celebrate her birthday.

“Even now, I still have fun and love people and just really I like to be where the gossip is,” Sanders said.

Sanders took the opportunity that no other seniors group in the state took when they began the Miles for Meals on Wheels fundraiser in the 1980’s. Sanders would sit outside and sell tickets to raise money for WASI at the Cottonwood Creek Mall. Sanders recalls having to drive through Palmer to get to Wasilla when she arrived in Alaska.

“Wasilla only had Teeland’s store down here on the corner and just if you could get here on the gravel road and you had to go up to Palmer and come back, they didn’t have a straight through,” Sanders said.

Sanders learned to love the Valley before she lived here, traveling to and from Anchorage for baseball games.

“We used to come and we had an old some kind of old car and we’d bring the kids up. It was a big, that was an all day thing from Anchorage. It was an all day trip from Anchorage to Palmer to get an ice cream cone and sit out on the porch of the old store,” Sanders said. “Baseball is the only game that I really enjoy. It’s the only game I know what the heck they’re doing and we attended all these junior things over at the school. We used to go out there and sit in the cold and the wind and go into Anchorage because we had grandkids in Anchorage so we had to go to every ballgame in anchorage until they grew up.”

Sanders continues to help out wherever she can at WASI. She quit driving in 1998, though her driver’s license is still valid until next year. Just last year she stopped baking, one of her other passions.

“I still cook a little bit, not much and I did bake. In fact I baked last year. One year I made 14 pies,” Sanders said. “I have requests for lemon pie, oh my god.”

Sanders is beloved by the WASI staff and her fellow senior citizens. Sanders prefers WASI to her home in Arizona, where there is little opportunity to interact with fellow seniors over meals and exercise. Sanders said that the secret to a long life is not to drink or eat greasy foods.

“She’s got a heart of gold she’s just one of the sweetest people that was ever made. She’d go out of her way to do anything for anybody,” Senior Services Coordinator Dennie Jacques said. “She just keeps going but one of the main things is she just likes what she’s doing. I used to go and sell quilt raffle tickets with her and we’d go to the stores and stuff and she’d sit there and there was not one person that I’ve seen that she did not know and remember their name and that was the thing that sold them. They bought the ticket because Carlene had it.”

(Authors note: Sanders was asked if there was anything that was not covered during the interview that she would like the readers to know) “At this age do you think I can think of it?” Sanders said.