Wasson to become centenarian next week

Earl Wasson admitted that he has had way more good days than bad in the 36,512 he’s been alive and one person stands head and shoulders above the rest as his favorites.

“Marie was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and she still is,” Earl said of his wife of 71-years. “Boy, we have danced a lot.”

On Tuesday, February 28, Earl will celebrate his 100th birthday with a celebration at the Hi-Line Retirement Center (from 2:30 p.m. until 4 p.m.) and though he is ready for the party, others in his family are finding some aspects of the party challenging.

“You just can’t find anything with ‘100th Birthday’ on it,” Marie said. “My two daughters have been looking everywhere and have only come up with a few napkins.”

Earl was born nearly 100 years ago in Velva, N.D. to Clara (Christofferson) and Orin F. Wasson. Earl was raised on a farm and graduated from Velva High School in 1935 during the middle of the Great Depression.

“There wasn’t no jobs,” Earl said, “there wasn’t no nothing. And in North Dakota, there was no poorer place in the world. As soon as I was out of high school, I moved to Malta.”

Earl took any work he could find – much of it with his bother-in-law, Bill Ashby – before getting hired as a mine laborer at the Ruby Gulch Mine in Zortman for 50¢ per hour.

That was one of the best paying jobs in the county and I was happy to have it,” Earl said.

Earl would go on to become a miner at Ruby Gulch — dangerous work in which he often had rocks falling on his head and had both of his feet smashed — and one day he was tasked with driving a co-worker to the hospital in Malta and it was there he would see the love of his life, Marie.

“We visited a little at the hospital,” Marie told the PCN at the couple’s 70th wedding anniversary last year. “And that night, when I got off work, he was there waiting for me. From there we were together until he left for the service in April of that year.”

Earl joined the US Army as a member of the 830th Engineer Aviation Battalion in the European Theater of Operations. The unit was at Kitzingen, Germany at the end of World War II, served in the Army of Occupation of Germany from in 1945 and was inactivated in France on November, 20, 1945.

In 1946, Earl came back to the US and he and Marie were married in Camas, Wash. Earl said it was shortly after that Billy Ashby (the brother-in-law he had worked with after first coming to Malta) gave him a call and said he had an opportunity to buy a large farm in Loring. Earl, raised on farm, jumped at the chance and the families came together in Loring to form one of the largest farms in northern Montana (some 8,000 acres) where they grew spring wheat for the next 30 years. Earl said that there were many things he enjoyed about farming, but pointed to combining as his favorite and said the one thing he didn’t miss at all is “picking rocks.”

For the next 30-years the couple worked the ranch before retiring in 1978. They built a home in Malta where they lived for years and have lived in the Hi-Line Retirement Center for the past three years. During their 70-years of marriage, Marie and Earl had three children – daughter Linda and sons Alan and Kent – and the couple has seven grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. They lived in their Malta home for the next 30 years before moving to the HLRC four years ago.

Marie said Earl’s party will be held at the HRLC’s cafeteria and coffee, cake and ice cream will be served.

“Come one, come all,” Marie said. “Come on down and visit Earl on his 100th birthday.”

“I don’t know how I ever lived to be 100 years old,” Earl added, “but I am glad I did.”