The cards began arriving at Phyllis Ankeny’s Aloha, Oregon, home shortly before her birthday.
“I’ve never received so many cards in my life,” she said.
Cards arrived from Alabama and California, Washington and Texas, Switzerland and Denmark.
She has received dozens of them.
And they keep coming.
The cards, with handwritten thoughts, are better than any gift in wrapping paper because they remind Ankeny that her life has had meaning, that she’s truly touched people.
They reminded her of her time in the Navy during World War II, of her time as a young mother, of her time helping out the police.
“Oh,” the 100-year-old woman said, “this is my best birthday ever.”
In the months leading up to January 27, her birthday, Phyllis Ankeny told her two daughters she didn’t want a party in her honor.
Her daughters insisted there had to be some sort of celebration for such a landmark day, so they decided to ask people who knew their mother – friends and family, as well as acquaintances Phyllis Ankeny hadn’t seen in decades – to send her a birthday card.
A simple idea. A powerful one. The cards proved to be a portal to a life well lived.
“I’ve lived through so many things,” Ankeny said. “It seems as if time has gone by so quickly.”
Phyllis Ankeny’s parents immigrated to the United States from Denmark early in the 20th century. They settled in Nebraska, where they raised five children while eking out a living farming.
As a little girl, Phyllis Ankeny, then Phyllis Jensen, learned the value of hard work. Each morning, as the oldest child, she had to gather the eggs, separate the milk and watch over her siblings while her mother prepared meals for the farmhands. She walked several miles to school, and sometimes she had to stoke the classroom fire before the other children arrived.
“I think that shaped her,” said Jean Holmboe, Ankeny’s oldest daughter. “She’s just one determined woman. Nothing’s going to get her down.”
Ankeny, who has had two brain surgeries, refuses to sit back and wait out her time left. She lives independently, next door to Holmboe’s home, and keeps busy.
Ankeny plays bridge every Monday for five hours, sometimes at her home, other times at other players’ homes.
“No two hands of cards are the same,” said Ankeny. “Just like life.”
Ankeny’s other daughter, Murlene “Sam” Madison, said her grandparents ultimately left Nebraska and headed to Portland in search of a better life.
“Farming just wasn’t dependable,” Madison said. “They got in the car and drove west, trusting they would find something here. It was a different generation. My grandfather supported the family laying tile and linoleum.”
After graduating from high school, Ankeny found a job at the Jantzen Knitting Mills Company, the iconic Portland swimwear-maker, but working with wool irritated her hands and she decided to find something else.
She applied to be an operator at the telephone company but was told her voice was too soft. While walking along Southwest Broadway in downtown Portland she spotted a military recruiting poster – Uncle Sam pointing out at the viewer over the words “I want you.”
It was 1943. The world was at war.
“I walked in and tried signing up for the Navy,” she said. “I was 19 and was told I needed my parents’ consent.”
Her parents gave their permission, and so Ankeny joined the WAVES – the newly created women’s branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve. Soon she was sent to a base in New Jersey, and then on to Florida.
Her job: Packing parachutes for pilots.
“I had to pack the chute and seal it,” said Ankeny. “My name was on every chute.”
She returned home on leave, stayed with her parents and one day ran into Bernard Ankeny, a man whose parents lived on the same street.
“We didn’t even know each other,” she said. “He’d been in the Navy and was also home on leave. We dated for six nights and then we both had to go back to the Navy. I was in Florida, and he was in New York.”
Six dates were enough. Bernard was smitten. Phyllis’ new beau called her daily.
“He said he wanted to marry me,” she said. “I told him he had come to me. I didn’t have any more leave.”
Ten days later they tied the knot.
Since Phyllis was now married, the Navy discharged her. She moved to New York to be with her husband. After the war, the couple returned to Portland, where Bernard went to work for Carnation Milk Products.
“We were so broke,” said Ankeny. “But we were happy and in love. When I had my first brain surgery he was my caretaker. He was so attentive.”
Her husband died in 1992.
Phyllis Ankeny’s children were grown, and so, in a sense, she had to start over.
“I had to have something to do,” she said. “To get over the loss, I needed to do something for someone else.”
She spent the next two decades volunteering at St. Vincent Medical Center, helping with cancer patients. She also did administrative work at the Beaverton Police Department.
“When you volunteer,” she said, “you become grateful for what you are able to do.”
The nights, Ankeny said, are the hardest. “There’s no one to talk to.”
What comforts her so late in life, she said, are her memories.
And, of course, the birthday cards in the basket she keeps next to her easy chair.
She reached into the basket one recent day, pulled out a card and read from it, traveling back in time to when she was simply a young mother, the future stretched out before her, not knowing what the years would hold, living in the moment.
She read out loud:
I could not have asked for a better neighbor or friend for the 20-plus years we shared on 101st street. Your door was always open to my children. Thank you, dear friend. Love you to the moon and back.
A four-sentence reminder that she touched lives in ways that, at the time, seemed insignificant but linger decades later.
