100 and counting.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

Without a doubt, living to the 100-year mark is an impressive feat, but for those who get that far, it appears to be something both to celebrate and tolerate.

Hazel Lundt, a feisty 102-year-old who lives at the Avamere Riverpark therapy and nursing care facility in Eugene, makes no bones about her view of living more than a century: "I just hope you don't live as long as I have," she says emphatically, and despite ample good memories of an interesting life filled with dancing, working, and marrying and raising children, it's clear she's not kidding.

Even so, it may be easier for Lundt to cope with the inevitabilities of the super-aged than some of her 100-plus contemporaries; her hearing is a bit better, so with aid from raised voices and oft-repeated questions, she still can summon up her memories and deliver one-liners that many standup comedians would be proud to utter.

Riverpark boasts five centenarians out of the 100 people now in residence, administrator Julie Piercy-Phelps said, and the facility gave a big bash for them a couple of months ago.

The oldest, Ora Frances "Polly" Boyd - she turned 106 in May - can't hear a thing, but she makes eye contact, laughs readily and occasionally calls out a sentence that means "She's my daughter," says Boyd's 84-year-old daughter, Rose Marie Grant.

"It's difficult - I can't understand much of what she says," probably because her pronunciation has deteriorated after years of increasing hearing loss, Grant said. "But she was always a happy person - I think people who are happy within themselves tend to live longer. That's one thing I've learned from her."

Even if Boyd no longer can speak for herself, her rich life is on display in a thick scrapbook in the Riverpark room she's occupied for nine years, and Grant enjoys sharing her story and coaxing deep laughs from her mother, who sits watching from a wheelchair.

Boyd was born in the Southern Oregon town of Talent, to Francis E.W. "Few" and Nellie Smith. Her own nickname, Polly, came from a song popular when she was a little girl. Her grandparents, originally from Kentucky, joined a wagon train in St. Joseph, Mo., and headed west to California, then took the Applegate Trail north to Oregon.

"They lost five children to cholera on the way west," Grant said. They raised four others, including Few, to adulthood.

As a girl, Polly Boyd helped her midwife mother "deliver babies on kitchen tables," Grant said.

In her teens, she went to work for the telephone company as an operator, and that's where she met her husband, Howard Boyd, "who came from Minnesota on a Harley Davidson motorcycle" and also worked for the phone company.

The couple wed on Sept. 29, 1923, "and my mother worked until I was born," Grant said.

Years later, when she rejoined the work force, "She worked for the Red Cross for 25 years, in The Dalles, Astoria, Klamath Falls and the state staff in Portland," Grant said.

After moving to Eugene, she became active in the Republican Party, serving as vice chairman of the Lane County Republicans. She also served as president of the University of Oregon's Mother's Club, raising money for construction of the Erb Memorial Union student center.

When then-vice presidential hopeful Richard Nixon came campaigning in 1952, "She picked him up at the train station, and he said, `You probably didn't get many people to come out, did you?'" Grant recalls her mother telling her. "But she had filled McArthur Court."

Her scrapbook also contains what appears to be a handwritten note from Nixon, dated Sept. 29, 1952, six days after his famous "Checkers speech," in which he answered allegations of mishandling campaign finances.

"This is just a note to tell you how deeply Pat and I appreciate your expression of confidence after the broadcast last Tuesday," it says. "We want you to know we will do our best never to let you down." It was signed Dick Nixon.

By virtue of her longevity, the scrapbook also includes missives from other presidential couples, including Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

Her interest in politics may have been influenced by her great-aunt, Grant surmises. The Oregon Blue Book verifies that Boyd's great-aunt, Marian Towne - a Democrat from Jackson County - was the first woman elected to the Oregon House of Representatives, in 1914.

Always active, Boyd served as a civilian aircraft observer for the 4th Fighter Command of the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. She also became a leader in Girl Scouts.

"When I was a child and we were living in Klamath Falls, she was always going out and picking up runaways from the trains," Grant said. "She would bring them home and clean them up - and then they had to share my bed with me until she found where they were supposed to go."

One of her mother's greatest adventures happened in 1957, when she and her husband decided it was time to travel, Grant said. "They learned to speak Spanish, bought a truck and drove all the way to the tip of South America," she said. "They were gone a whole year."

Boyd's joie de vivre "lasted until she was about 100," Grant said. "She was pretty good until then, but it's been harder since."

Even so, the woman still has the spirit for a surprise or two, said Kay Kastrava, a certified nurse assistant at Riverpark.

"She's quite funny," Kastrava said. "Sometimes, when we're in her room with her and we lean over, we feel this little pat, pat, pat from Polly."

Another of Riverpark's centenarians, 101-year-old Ruth Wilcox, spent her first 95 years in Montana, where she became a high school Latin teacher.

She has trouble pulling in memories of the past, but she remembers "walking to school" as a child near Harlem, Mont., about 40 miles east of Havre and even closer to the Canadian border.

She remembers enjoying - even writing - poetry; her favorite poem is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith."

The year escapes her, but Wilcox married a Methodist minister, the Rev. Monroe Wilcox, a widower with three young children, whom she raised and loved as her own. Her parents "were very good people," and she does remember that through the decades, she crocheted and gave away "a lot of baby booties."

"I never thought I would be 100," Wilcox said.

Neither did Lundt, but a century of living hasn't dulled her sharp - and slightly caustic - wit.

Her favorite memories involve her zeal for attending dances and her lifelong love of her grandfather's farm in Scottsburg, about halfway between Elkton and Reedsport on Highway 38.

Before marrying and raising two children, she worked in a veneer plant, grading lumber.

"When the bands come here (to Riverpark) now, you sit right there and dance in your chair," Piercy-Phelps reminds her.

"What is that favorite of yours, `My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon?'" and Lundt instantly launches into a quavery rendition of the 1892 song written by Hames Thorton.

"My sweetheart's the man in the moon/I'm going to marry him soon," she sings. "Twould fill me with bliss, just to give him one kiss/But I know that a dozen I never would miss/I'll go up in a great big balloon/And see my sweetheart in the moon/Then behind some dark cloud, where no one is allowed/I'll make love to the man in the moon."

Then come the one-liners.

Her mother, who "knew plenty of those old songs," taught her that one, Lundt said. "She taught me plenty, like how to be a lady."

How do you be a lady? "You watch your mouth," she said.

What did she do on her grandfather's farm? "Made a pest of myself."

When she met her husband, was it love at first sight? "Oh, heavens no."

Did she always want children? "Not particularly." (But she loved them "absolutely" once they arrived.)

What's the secret to longevity? "Tend to your own damned business," Lundt said.

She's not kidding about that, either.