This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Lou Calder remembers the first car to tool around Bear Lake.
"It was a Buick, I think."
She watched teams of horses carry hay across a frozen Bear Lake and anglers store fish along the shore for year-round eating.
But on Wednesday, the 105-year-old celebrated her birthday with a treat to really take her back to her roots: a raspberry milkshake.
Calder is one of the 104 centenarians listed with the Utah Department of Administrative Services, and one of only six who are 105 and older. She was born Sept. 17, 1909.
Wellington Senior Living center in Salt Lake City, where she has lived for seven years, hosted a birthday party with a Hawaiian theme — raspberry shakes excepted — on Thursday.
"She rules the place," said Holly Smith, the Wellington's activities director. "She's the queen."
Calder is the oldest resident of the center.
She lived her first 25 years in Garden City, on the western shore of Bear Lake. Her parents raised raspberries, and she and her six brothers and three sisters were the pickers.
"We picked enough raspberries to buy our own school clothes," she said Wednesday.
Her mother would can the berries and sell them in Evanston and Kemmerer, Wyo. Her father, meanwhile, caught fish and stored them in an ice house along the lake shore, layering the fish in ice with sawdust so he could sell them year round.
Calder married Milton Calder at age 18 and they moved to Salt Lake City when she was 25 so he could work for the Greyhound bus company.
After she raised their daughter, Calder went to work for Auerbach's department store in downtown Salt Lake City. She spent 25 years there, mostly as a floor supervisor.
Calder lost her husband in 1990, but her daughter and many in the extended family — five grandchildren, 27 great-grandchildren and 41 great-grandchildren — continue to live in Utah.
Of all her siblings, she has only one brother still living. "My baby brother is 96," she said. "I've been blessed with good health and hard work."
The Aging and Adult Services division of the Utah Department of Human Services lists the names of 104 Utahns who are at least 100 years old as of Wednesday, but there may be more because listing is voluntary, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Sollis. Another five will turn 100 before the end of the year.
Those who would like to be listed can add their names via the agency's website, http://daas.utah.gov/centenarians/, and they will be invited to the annual celebrations for those who've reached 100.
Twitter: @KristenMoulton