Photo by Deb Gau Ilene Merritt, 99, talked with the Independent about her life. Merritt grew up on the family farm in the Canby area and lived in Minneota and Florida.

MARSHALL — Ilene Merritt said she’s always been a person who likes to stay busy. And staying active is something that’s served her well.

Merritt is 99, and will be 100 in April.

“I didn’t plan on it. But it just happened,” she said. “It’s been a good life.”

Merritt, a longtime Minneota resident who now lives at Avera Morningside Heights in Marshall, spoke to the Independent this month about her life.

“I was born on the family farm southwest of Canby,” in 1925, Merritt said.

She was the youngest child in the Hoseck family, after her brother Bert and her sisters Verna and Lucille.

Out of her siblings, “I think I was the headache,” she said. “I had lots of ambition.” She said she used to drive her mother crazy by doing things like climbing to the top of the barn.

On the farm, “There was lots to do, every day,” Merritt said.

Her family raised crops and livestock, and Ilene kept ducks. Like other farm kids in the area, she attended country school.

“I think there were 30 children, in all eight grades, in it. That’s the way they were,” she said.

For one year of school, Ilene got to class by riding on horseback, until the weather got too cold.

“That was great. I could be home in five minutes,” she said.

Ilene shared memories of life on the home front during World War II.

“I can remember very exactly where I was when Pearl Harbor happened,” she said.

She was with her parents, attending an anniversary party at their neighbors’ home. A young man who had been listening to the radio at the gathering stood up and said the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

“And I can remember it got just silent, everybody just sat and were just stunned,” she said.

Ilene’s brother Bert served in Europe during the war.

“We’d get an occasional letter (from him),” she said. “Never anything about the war or where they were … If there was something, they’d clip it out of your letter. You’d get a letter with a little hole in it.”

After Bert came home, she learned that he had been part of the Allies’ invasion of Europe.

“He went through that whole campaign, the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, and into Germany. He ended up in southern Germany, close to Switzerland,” she said.

Ilene graduated from Canby High School in 1943.

“When I got out of school, I went to work with my dad out on the farm because my brother was in the service,” she said. “I did everything — milked cows, and cut fodder corn with three horses, and did everything that a farmer does.”

Merritt said she and her father would take a horse and wagon out to pick corn by hand. The wagon was higher than an ordinary open wagon, and equipped with a “bang board” to help catch ears of corn as they were tossed into the wagon.

“You just went up the field and took the ears (of corn) off,” she said. “When I picked with my dad, we could pick three rows up. I picked the one closest to the wagon, and he picked the other two. And then you get to the end (of the rows), turn around and come back. You’d get six rows and you could go home and you’d have a load of corn.”

After having dinner, they would go back out again for another load of corn in the afternoon, she said.

A year after going to work on the family farm, Ilene married her husband Glenn Merritt, who was from Porter.

“We had a short wedding trip — I think it was four days — and went clear up to Thief River Falls. We had to get gas stamps from my dad, so we didn’t run out of gas.”

Glenn and Ilene came back from their trip in time to help out with the harvest.

“Then we moved to Minneota,” she said.

“We rented two rooms where we could live, but that was in 1944. In 1947, we built our first house,” Merritt said.

The Merritts lived most of their lives in Minneota. But in 1954, when their family was still young, they moved to Florida. Ilene said a doctor had advised a warmer climate to help Glenn with a back injury.

“We knew some people down in Florida. And he went down and bought a house down there, out in the woods,” she said.

The house was part of a small settlement of about eight homes and a Methodist church, located six miles north of Silver Springs, in central Florida.

“It had been a lumbering town, but then when they cut all the trees they moved away, and the houses were left,” she said.

Life was busy for Glenn and Ilene. They had four children when they moved.

“Our baby was a month old. And our little boy was a year and-a-half, and the girls were four and six,” she said.

In addition to caring for their family, Glenn worked in carpentry and construction, and Ilene painted and did work on the inside of their house.

Ilene said there was a chain gang of prisoners that would come and cut weeds and do road work in the area, and she kept a rifle in her kitchen for safety. She did use the rifle once — but it was on a snake that had gotten close to the house.

“My daughter said, ‘Mom, there’s a snake out here on the porch.’ And so I went and looked, and there was a big water moccasin,” she said.

Ilene went out a different door of the house, and shot the snake with her rifle.

At the sound of the gunshot, “My neighbor across the street came running over,” she said. “We put a string on the big snake and hung him up on the clothesline, so that when Glenn came home he could see what I had been doing.”

Although it was a busy life in Florida, “It was a very good life,” Ilene said.

The Merritts made friends with neighbors from all across the U.S., and they all attended the nearby Methodist church. They also enjoyed going crabbing, and taking trips to the beach on weekends.

“We were 50 miles from Daytona Beach. So we’d pack up and run over after we’d get home from church on Sunday,” she said. “I’d make sandwiches or something, and we could have lunch on the beach.”

The Merritts returned to southwest Minnesota in 1957 to help family after major floods hit the area. Ilene said they moved back to their “little house” in Minneota.

“We were pretty crowded, after the big house down there (in Florida),” she said. The Merritts ended up adding on to the house several times.

Ilene said her family were part of a group of new members who began attending Hope Lutheran Church in Minneota after the current church building was constructed. The Merritts’ five children were all confirmed and baptized at Hope Lutheran, as well.

“I did a lot of church work,” Merritt said.

Being part of the Hope Lutheran congregation helped her during a difficult time. In 1970, Ilene and Glenn’s son Barry was killed in an accident at the age of 18. Ilene said she hadn’t been able to be active at church for a couple of years after that.

“We had a (church) centennial in 1972,” she said. “And one of the women came to my house and wanted to know, would I manage the church dinner for the centennial? And I thought about it, and I thought, well, maybe I better do that.”

“We started in February planning that (dinner) because it was a three-day affair,” she said. “And so that was kind of what got me back on my feet again.”

Over the years, Merritt continued to stay busy in a lot of different ways. She gardened at home in Minneota, and would often send her children’s friends home with fresh garden vegetables.

“One year I had 100 tomato plants,” she said. “I always put in 50. And then Glenn went to Canby and saw a sign at the greenhouse that said, buy a flat of tomato plants and get one free. So he came home with 50 more tomato plants.”

“I had ripe tomatoes, I tried to give them to everybody,” she said.

Ilene also did a lot of sewing and crochet. She started out making clothes for her children as they grew up.

“And when I kind of ran out of anybody to sew for, I started to crochet. I made about 40 afghans,” she said. “I’d always make sure I had an afghan ready for when the kids graduated, and I made a really beautiful one for my granddaughter when she got married.”

“I started working at the nursing home in Minneota when my youngest son was a senior in high school, and I worked there 29 years and eight months,” Merritt said.

Ilene enjoyed working for head nurse Mary Ann Full.

“I also drove. We had a van that we took people to the hospital and for doctor’s appointments. I drove that for 16 years.”

Even when she retired, Merritt didn’t slow down. She bought a Mercury Cougar.

“It was bright red, and it had everything on it,” she said. “I really figured I’d earned that. I drove the heck out of it.”

Ilene also had a riding mower that she would use to mow her lawn.

“That was fun,” she said. “I think I was 95 when I quit mowing.”

When asked if she had advice on living, Merritt said she’s never enjoyed sitting around.

“I’d get up in the morning, and stay busy all day,” she said. “I don’t smoke and I don’t drink. At Christmas time we’d have a little wine, and that was it.”

Merritt said she’s had a good life. While there had been tragedy and difficult times, she said, “Somehow or other, it makes you stronger.”