This month two lovely ladies who have contributed through the decades to the Lewis County community marked a milestone many never reach — a 100th birthday.
I’m honored to know both Pearl (Troop) Miller, who lives at Woodland Village in Chehalis, and Margaret (Dulitz) Wildhaber, who helped me with the book, “Chapters of Life at the Southwest Washington Fair.”
I first met Pearl when a group of us gathered in 2005 to honor Rosie the Riveters and the Guys who worked on the homefront during World War II.
Efforts to create a book capturing their stories expanded to include the recollections of women who participated in the United Service Organization, a private, nonprofit worldwide group formed to support American troops with morale and recreational services. Pearl participated in the USO and folded bandages for the Red Cross. Later, I worked with Pearl to publish the story she had written of her life.
She’s the only person I’ve met who really is “an Okie from Muskogee,” as she was born Dec. 9, 1918, near Muskogee, Oklahoma. Her family moved to a farm in Kansas without electricity or indoor plumbing, where she grew up during the Great Depression and walked a mile to a two-room school. She experienced the struggles of farm families during the Dust Bowl, when skies darkened as wind swirled topsoil off fields and into any cracks in homes. They fought grasshoppers and chinch bugs, springtime tornadoes, freezing winters and unbearable summer heat.
After graduating from Cherokee High School in Kansas in 1936, she did housework and cared for children before moving west at 21 to live with an aunt and uncle, who was a bookkeeper for Carlisle Lumber Co. in Onalaska. She worked first at Washington Gas and Electric and later at Rainier Crossarm Co. in Chehalis.
While attending a dance at Woody’s Nook north of Centralia, she met Ron Miller, a native of White Salmon, who had served with the Signal Corps in the South Pacific during WWII. Ron attended Centralia Business College and started working in 1946 as a bookkeeper for the Lewis County Public Utility District, where he remained as chief financial officer until retiring in 1982.
He and Pearl married April 19, 1947, at Westminster Presbyterian Church, and raised three sons — Dennis, Greg and Brian. They had been married 51 years when Ron died Jan. 9, 1999. They were involved in the church, where I attended Pearl’s 90th birthday celebration a decade ago.
I met the gracious Margaret Wildhaber, who turns 100 on Christmas Day, while compiling the history of the Southwest Washington Fair, where her husband, Tony, served as manager for 22 years.
Margaret, a South Dakota native who studied at Northern State Teachers College in Aberdeen, South Dakota, served three years as a teletype operator in the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service, or WAVES, during WWII. She was a telephone company business office supervisor in Yakima when she met her future husband.
Anton Wendelin “Tony” Wildhaber, the son of a Swiss emigrant, grew up on a dairy farm in Frances, graduated from high school in Lebam, and from St. Martin’s College in 1950. He served four years as a pharmacist’s mate in the South Pacific during WWII and later worked as a pharmaceutical company salesman and marketing specialist for the Department of Agriculture.
The couple married Oct. 6, 1952, at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Chehalis. They lost a baby, Lynette, in 1953, and a 21-year-old son, Christopher, Nov. 25, 1976. Their surviving children are MaryAnne, Daniel, and Valerie.
The family settled near Chehalis in 1956, where Tony worked at the Sears Farm Store before accepting the job as fair manager. The children were involved in 4-H and Margaret served as leader of the Newaukum Country Cousins Club. The family worked together many years along with volunteers to make the Southwest Washington Fair successful. Tony brought in popular entertainment, replaced horse racing with the destruction derby, and launched the Little Miss Friendly competition. The fairgrounds expanded and survived both fire and floods.
After retiring from the fair, Tony worked in real estate. The Wildhabers had been married almost 53 years when Tony died Sept. 30, 2005.
Both these women serve as examples of aging gracefully. I wish them both the Merriest of Christmases and all the best in their 101st year.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.
