It’s in the genes

PRESCOTT – For a vast majority of women who will be celebrated Sunday for Mother’s Day, the party will probably end before mom goes to bed.

But for one rural Prescott woman, the party isn’t over. She will get a second consecutive day but for a different reason. Lola Blazek turns 103 on Monday.

“I have had my birthday on Mother’s Day,” Blazek said, reminiscing with her three children and preparing for another Mother’s Day and birthday. “I didn’t think I’d make it to 100, but the kids have sure been a help.”

Lola is member of an exclusive generation of people who have lived through the growth of technology and when history appears to have repeated itself.

She was the fourth of five children born to Ross and Iona Woodside. Lola was born May 10, 1918, in Washington Township in Adair County near the Adams County line. Lola’s sister, Dorothy McCall, is the only surviving sibling. She is 99 and lives in Bridgewater.

As the old saying, ‘when times get tough, the tough get going,’ Lola took it to heart.

Lola lived in tough times and nealy right from the start. Not long after birth she was diagnosed with the Spanish flu. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the United States, the flu was first diagnosed in spring 1918. It is estimated about 500 million people around the world became infected.

The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 in the United States. The chances of death were high in people younger than 5.

Lola remembers being told her entire family was eventually diagnosed.

“Mom said she couldn’t pat me on the back or I’d bawl,” she said. “Dad would go out and chore and then come back in and lie down. I don’t know how we survived.”

Lola has paid attention to the COVID-19 pandemic that has changed the world the past year.

“COVID is the worst thing I’ve seen,” she said.

Things didn’t get better for the family.

“The Depression years were terrible. Everybody was broke. It was dry weather and no crops. 1934 was a dry year. Everything that could have gone wrong, did,” she said about her teenage years. “My parents stuck it out until they got started again.”

Two of her brothers went to other states to find work. Lola stayed close and worked the fields using horse-drawn implements and shocking oats.

The pandemics are not the only thing that has given Lola deja vu. The farm crisis in the 1980s reminded her of the Depression years.

“In 1929 all the banks took the money out and things went kaput. In the 1980s things were about the same,” she said.

School was at the country schoolhouse simply named Washington #7. She eventually transferred to Nevinville for a couple of years before graduating at Greenfield at the age of 16. At the time ‘normal’ training was normal as that is what it was called for girls to learn how to be a teacher. But Lola had to wait until she was 18 to lead a classroom because of laws.

“My mother was a good mother,” Lola said. “She was bound and determined for her kids to get an education, or else. She worked hard in the garden. She was also bound and determined for us to have music lessons.”

All of the children graduated high school. Lola’s fingers danced upon the piano keys.

During those two years to wait until she was 18, she worked in other people’s homes from preparing meals and doing the laundry. She lived with the family she worked.

“I got paid $3 a week,” she said. “That was good money.”

Her first teaching position when she turned 18 happened to be at the same Washington #7. The site was familiar as a sister and her mother also had taught there.

“It was the same old thing,” Lola laughed about the class she taught. School was done in the same manner when she was a student. Lola was paid $50 month to teach.

Not long after turning 18, she attended a dance at the nearby Bohemian hall and met Ernest Blazek. They married May 15, 1937.

“We were a farm family,” Lola said about the early years. “We really never celebrated our wedding anniversary since he was planting corn at that time.”

The husband-and-wife grew into a family. Lola’s first child died during infancy. The other children are Sharon Walter, Dick Blazek and Joyce Green.

Lola saw Iowa and the country grow in different ways. What electricity did to rural, southern Iowa may have felt the same to what the computer and Internet did to the world.

“We got electricity in 1947,” she said about her rural Adams County home. She has lived in the same house for 82 years.

“People turned on bulbs night and day,” Lola remembered about the influence of electricity in the area and how it spread to household appliances of today. “The electric was reliable but we just had bulbs. I got an electric iron after that. It was great when I got an electric stove, but that was a long time after we got electricity.” Meals had been prepared with the corn cob and wood burning stoves.

The children saw the signature Midwest work ethic and provisions through their mother while growing up.

“I remember the homemade noodles drying over the backs of chairs,” Dick said. “Then after they dried, they would get cut into noodles.” Lola also made soap which she called “the best in the world.”

Lola continued her teaching skills with her kids.

“She did help with homework,” Walter remembered.

“But I didn’t help with algebra,” Lola interrupted.

Like Lola, the three children all learned to play piano.

Ernest’s grandfather taught Lola some of the Czechoslovakian language which she can still recite today. The family has a Czechoslovakian heritage. That spilled over into Lola learning how to make the native foods including kolach, a sweet, fruit-flavored pastry.

She has been a decades long member of the Avondale United Methodist Church.

As the years passed, Lola didn’t appear to slow down.

“I’ve made the grandkids quilts and afghans,” she said.

She has nine grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

Card games are a popular hobby for Lola, especially pinochle, with her sister and friends from church.

The children have stayed in Southwest Iowa and close to mom. Ross died in 1977 at the age of 63. Walter said they talk to mom every day and Sunday dinner is a weekly ritual, sometimes with extended family.

“Every Sunday we meet somewhere for dinner,” Walter said. “Dad had a sister and lived in Orient and they came out every Sunday too. We are just one big family.”

After becoming a widow, Lola started to travel with others and has since visited each of the 50 states and has been a global traveler with stops in New Zealand, Australia, the Caribbean and most of Europe.

“Australia is such a nice country,” she said.

When she was 74, she went river rafting in the Colorado River.

“That was rough,” she chuckled.

What was also rough was the tornado and storm that blew through the area in 2015. Lola wasn’t afraid to talk to the television stations which reported on the storm and damage. Their stories were shared across the country with other stations.

Those family get-togethers happened when Lola reached another milestone birthday. When she reached 90, the party was big.

“For my 100th birthday, it was just another day,” she said with a humble tone. “But they had a big blowout for me. I didn’t think I’d make it to 100.”

Lola has showed her humor with her age with Walter.

Walter said she let out a sigh when she turned 80.

“If I were only 80,” Walter said about how her mother responded.

Green is the family historian as she has collected pictures and memories of her mother and branches on the family tree. A scrapbook seems to grow by the year as Lola tells more stories and experiences more of life.

“I would help mom with her quilts,” Green said. “That’s when she would tell me those stories. Then I’d go home and write them down. And that story starts from day one.”

Lola said she doesn’t know the secret to her longevity. She said she has never smoked. Drinking was never an interest. The kids said their mother has used minimal amounts of prescriptions over the years.

“I didn’t have time,” Lola laughed about using those vices. “There is time to get the farm work done, then it’s time for bed.”

Lola’s father died in 1982 at the age of 95. Her mom was 102 when she passed in 1991.

“I think it’s in the genes,” Lola said about her long life, showing respect to her parents.

Monday’s birthday is planned with another round of cards with sister Dorothy and friends.

“It’s just another day,” Lola said.