Payson Roundup

Mary Larson isn’t sure, but she thinks she was born in Hubbard, Ariz.

Her uncertainty is easy to understand. After all, the event in question took place 102 years, one week and one day ago. There’s not many people around who can tell you where they were, exactly, on Nov. 21, 1900.

Mary Larson, at 102 years of age, says the secret to a long life is “entirely up to you.”

But that is the only hole in Larson’s powers of recollection a point she happily proved during an interview conducted not long after the staff of Payson Care Center helped celebrate her birthday last Thursday.

“I’m very thankful that I still have my memories,” Larson said with a smile. “A lot of older people don’t have them anymore, you know. A lot of people younger than myself. But that hasn’t happened to me yet, and I don’t believe it will.”

Larson’s favorite memories are of her late husband, Alexander, and her children.

“We didn’t always live in Arizona,” she said. “Alexander and I went to New Mexico for a while, to a place called La Ventana. That’s ‘the window’ in Spanish. Alexander worked underground, in coal and copper mines. He liked it, but I think that had something to do with the fact that he didn’t live to be very old.

“He loved to fight roosters. We called him ‘Alexander the Rooster Fighter.’ We had four small children, very close together. I didn’t work; I just stayed home and cared for my babies. But now, my children are all gone except for one daughter.”

Asked if she ever considered the possibility that she would live well past 100 years, Larson shrugged.

“I never gave it a thought,” she said. “I guess I took good care of myself, but I didn’t do it intentionally. I never drank coffee until just lately. I never drank liquors of any kind. I always lived a clean life.

“But I’m not going to say that I never swore,” Larson added with a laugh. “When you have four children, it’s pretty hard not to swear every now and then.

“The most important thing to know is that what you make of your life is entirely up to you,” she said. “It can be rough, or it can be a good life. I’ve had a good life.”