Woman has 102 candles, big smile

Diane Pratt snapped a photo as Mildred Boeker gazed at her sprawling birthday cake.

"You look better than I do, Mildred," Pratt said with a smile.

It was no empty compliment.

At 102, with a fragile figure but sharp, attentive eyes, Boeker was still up to basking in attention at her birthday party on Thursday.

She wouldn't say which was easier so far, the first 100 years, or the second.

But there was one thing she knew.

"I wouldn't need another 100," she said.

The value of her lifetime was evidenced in the cafeteria at Pinewood Care Center, where a crowd of friends and family surrounded her with congratulations and well wishes.

All spoke of relying on the independent woman through hard times and good, and of witnessing her constant volunteerism.

"She's pretty special," said her granddaughter Teresa Ferrari, who flies in from Portland for Boeker's birthday each year. "She still crochets almost every day, and gives them to the Shriner's Hospital, churches, friends. She's always got piles to give away."

Besides donating blankets, which Boeker has done for several years, she was also a passionate volunteer at First Baptist Church, said her friend Nanette Bagley.

"We were in church groups together, we set up luncheons together," Bagley said adding that Boeker also loved to sing in the choir.

Bagley pointed to the church pastor who had made it to the party.

"We're lucky to have her (Boeker) here today," Bagley said.

Boeker was born on Jan. 20, 1909, in Rushville, Ill. She also grew up there, surviving through the Depression.

Her husband died of cancer in 1961, and Boeker moved to Coeur d'Alene to be near her daughter.

She has lived through many hard times, her granddaughter said.

"One of my favorite things about her is to tell about what it was like in the old days, like before there was electricity," Ferrari said.

Boeker's daughter, Darlene Atwood, couldn't guess how her mother had made it this long.

"We started doing this (having a big birthday party) when she was 90, thinking this would be her last birthday," Atwood remembered.

Her mother has always had an impressive work ethic, she said, and worked at a Coeur d'Alene drugstore until she was 75.

"She just wanted to," her daughter said. "She was alone then, my father had died many years before. She just chose to. Then she had to learn to crochet, because she had nothing to do."

Atwood admires how her mother still crochets, she said, even though Atwood has to sometimes correct her on the direction the blanket is facing.

"All my friends at the Eagles give me all the yarn they can get their hands on," she said.

Pratt knows Boeker's obsession well. She lived in an apartment behind Boeker's about 30 years ago, she said, and Boeker taught her to crochet and served her cookies.

"We hung out together," said Pratt, who has stayed in contact with Boeker ever since. "It was back when you were young, right, Mildred?"

Bagley predicted her friend would continue cobbling blankets as long as she is able.

"She said crocheting saved her life, because she does it everyday," she said.