107 year old Caroline Curl of Hot Springs has been named the 2021 South Dakota Centenarian of the Year.
Curl is currently the oldest living member of the South Dakota Health Care Association and KELOLAND Television, Century ClubSM.
Caroline Curl is the 2021 South Dakota Centenarian of the Year.
Photo credit Fall River County Herald Star.
In April of this year, Curl talked about her life with the Fall River County Herald Star, from which the following details and quotes are taken.
Curl was born on a farm near Red Canyon, South Dakota, north of Edgemont, on March 29, 1914. She grew up as the second of six siblings in a small cabin, which her father added on to as more children were born and more space was needed.
She recalls her family maintaining a large garden to help them meet their needs throughout the depression years of the 1930s, with their cellar being full of eggs, butter and milk. Given the rural nature of the area, the country school she attended didn’t have many students, and Curl was the only person in her class until 7th grade. “I liked school. I liked arithmetic and spelling and later I liked geography,” she remembers.
After high school, Curl found employment doing housework for a woman in Edgemont. Through this job, Curl met the woman’s son, Barney, who would eventually become her husband. The marriage produced two children, John and Mary, as well as seven grandchildren, eight great grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren.
Over the years, Curl would supplement the family income by sewing for others, including wedding and flower girl dresses, as well as baking wedding cakes. She jokes that “I learned to cook when I was seven, so think about that, I learned to cook one hundred years ago.”
She attributes her longevity to her clean living and active upbringing. “We didn’t do a lot of carousing around and doing things we ought not to do because we didn’t have a lot of money, we had clean food, fresh eggs, and chickens you dressed out the day you ate ‘em. Clean living, giving to others and common everyday life.”
She also has some advice for younger people today: “You need to always give your body time to rest, you need good food to eat and I think just serving other people; giving to others is very rewarding. We used to go help our neighbor in the country just to help, you just went to help, you didn’t get paid. Maybe the next time you needed help they would come help you. I call it free living.”
To read more about Curl’s life, please find the Fall River County Herald Star’s original reporting here. (April 21, 2021 edition).
The Century Club was created by the South Dakota Health Care Association to recognize South Dakotans age 100 or older, both for their longevity and their contributions to our state. Over 1,300 South Dakotans have been inducted into the Century Club since its founding in 1997. The Century Club is, as its name states, a club. Therefore, there may be older people in the state that have not yet been inducted by a family member or loved one into the Century Club.
The Century Club is open to any resident of South Dakota upon the celebration of his or her 100th birthday. There are no dues and each inductee receives a specially designed certificate and membership card. Once a year, the current oldest living Century Club Member is recognized as the “Centenarian of the Year.” Submit names for the Century Club by visiting www.sdhca.org and downloading a Century Club application or call LuAnn Severson, Century Club Coordinator, at 1-800-952-3052.
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