Delia, A Very Remakable Lady

Across the Fence #378

Abraham Lincoln said, “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

If there was ever a person who personifies that quote by Abe Lincoln, it’s Delia Stendalen from Westby. She’s not a complainer. She rejoices because thorn bushes have roses.

I recently interviewed Delia on our “Conversations Across the Fence” program on Vernon Communication’s Community Channel 14. I’ve wanted to interview her for a long time. She’ll be 98 on April 16, 2012.

Delia and I share common ancestors. Her grandmother and my great grandmother were sisters. Let me tell you a few things about this remarkable lady.

Delia still has the attitude that she can do anything she sets her mind to. She still drives her own car. Her license is good until she turns 103. She said they probably won’t want to give her a new one at that time. She still mows her own lawn and shovels her own driveway most of the time. Other people have tried to beat her to the punch and shovel it for her, but they need to get up mighty early in the morning. She usually has it almost cleared by the time help arrives. Two years ago she had the ladder up against the house and was clearing her gutters. Her daughters told her she shouldn’t be climbing up ladders and onto the roof any more and took her ladder away. So what did Delia do? She went to a neighbor and borrowed their ladder and then waited until dark to clean her gutters so no one would see her. Her daughters have now warned the neighbors to not lend her a ladder if she asks for one! Next time you have some aches and pains or don’t feel like doing something, think of Delia. She’s not about to let anything stop her. When a neighbor lady had problems pumping gas because of pain in her hands, Delia said she’d ride with and pump it for her.

This is a lady who never complains about thorns, she only sees the roses. I don’t think the words, “I can’t do it,” are in her vocabulary. At the age of 91 she went parasailing. She’d like to do it again. Even though she has a life-long fear of water, she went tubing on the river when she was in her 80’s.

Delia grew up on a farm near Bloomingdale, Wisconsin and as she puts it, she was her father’s right hand and later her husband’s right hand. She helped with all the chores, milked cows by hand, used a wheel borrow to take the manure out of the barn, piled hay bales on the wagons, climbed in tobacco sheds and helped hang tobacco, and the list goes on and on. While cutting tobacco when she was young, her sister, who was chopping behind her, accidentally cut her in the butt. People who have raised tobacco know how sharp those axes are. She said it bled a lot but they didn’t want her folks to find out, so they never told them, and she never had the cut looked at by a doctor. Another time she broke two ribs but kept on working despite the pain. I don’t know how she did it.

She’s a tough Norwegian and still drinks many cups of coffee each day, including one before she goes to bed. She also loves cookies and chocolates.

Delia finished eighth grade but wasn’t able to go to high school because she had to help on the farm. She was also an accomplished musician and played piano and accordion for many years in a band called The Prairie Ramblers. With money she had saved, she was able to buy a small accordion. She never had a music lesson and learned to play it on her own. Their band was in great demand, and they were even featured on a radio program in La Crosse. It was during a dance that she met her husband. He was playing in another band. Her daughters didn’t know she had been in a dance band until a few years ago. Delia is not one to brag about anything.

In her almost 98 years she has seen many changes. She saw the transition of going from farming with horses to using tractors. She went from riding in a buggy and sleigh pulled by horses to her first ride in a car. She saw her first airplane fly over when she was young and wondered how long it could stay up in the sky. She remembers first hearing a radio and was fascinated by the music that came out of it. She lived through those tough days of the Great Depression, but even when telling about it doesn’t complain. “Everyone suffered through it,” she says, “but we made due with what we had.”

Delia said, “When times were hard we just had to keep on going and we made it.” You don’t hear her complaining about the thorns of life, she just keeps her eyes on the roses. Later that day after doing the interview, three of us were at a conference. We came to a place where we could take the escalator or the stairs up to where our meeting was. Randi Smalley, who had done the videotaping during the interview, said, “What would Delia do?” The answer was easy; we took the stairs.

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