A Waterloo local and former manager of the Sunset Motel celebrated her 100th birthday last Saturday, with family members gathering to honor her character, work ethic and love for others.

Flossie Louella Baker grew up in East Prairie, Mo. Though she can still be quick and characterful at her age, several family members helped recount much of her life – including her daughters Jonna Rickert and Pam Mathews and granddaughter Ashley Diestelkamp.

Born as the fifth child between four boys and three girls in a family of sharecroppers, her sisters mainly stuck to chores inside while she joined her mother in picking cotton outside when she was young.

Per Mathews, Baker thoroughly enjoyed going to school as a child, and she had remarkable penmanship.

While her writing skills haven’t diminished all that much, she’s her harshest critic in this area.

“Her writing was just beautiful,” Mathews said. “And if she writes, she’ll tell you ‘Ah! My writing just isn’t what it used to be!’ But she’s got this gorgeous calligraphy award that certifies she graduated Palmer Penmanship.”

With the family moving to East St. Louis when she was a teenager, Baker eventually had to step away from school in the ninth grade in order to work, serving as a waitress at a small restaurant and handing off the money to her mother.

It was at her second restaurant job where she met her husband, who was serving as a manager. Mathews recounted how he asked Baker out in a group, and she firmly refused an offer of whiskey and Coke.

Diestelkamp offered an additional anecdote she recalled Baker sharing.

“From what Ma has told us in the past, when Pa first asked her out, she said something about ‘No, I’m busy,’ and he asked her what she was doing,” Diestelkamp said. “And she said, ‘Well, I drink my orange soda and I mind my own business.’”

She worked as a riveter through World War II, returning to waitressing after the war and marrying her husband.

At that time, her husband owned his own restaurant in Baker’s Grill, though this was soon sold for a restaurant a block away from the old Busch Stadium.

Baker was a stay-at-home mom then, watching over four daughters. As Mathews said, she was exceptionally bored during the day with the girls in school even as she tried to keep busy by doing such things as serving as a Girl Scout leader.

She urged her husband to purchase a restaurant for her to run in East St. Louis, and he did so even as he argued that the location she had in mind wouldn’t be at all profitable.

“He bought it, and she ran it, and it got so busy that he had to hire someone for over in St. Louis, and he had to come over and cook lunch for her because she was so busy,” Mathews said. “They made really good money there.”

Baker later wound up working at W.T. Grants as a supervisor, at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville and Gardner Advertising in St. Louis in accounting.

With her family coming to live in Waterloo over the years, Baker came to serve as manager of Sunset Motel  at the request of one of her sons-in-law shortly after the death of her husband.

Mathews spoke to her work ethic as the motel’s manager, noting how she played a major role in helping the business be successful.

She began serving as manager of the motel when she was 65, and she stayed in this position for many years, managing to keep independent until she turned 91.

Mathews and Rickert shared a number of general anecdotes about their mother, noting how strict she was with her daughters but astonishingly relaxed and funny around other family members, once riding up to a family gathering on the back of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle wearing a black wig to look like a hippy.

They also recounted how she would walk to school each day as a kid, save for those special occasions where her brother would hitch a horse to a family wagon. Mathews also described them stopping by a watermelon patch and splitting a melon among the siblings during the summer.

Along with her quick wit when she was first getting to know her husband, Mathews and Rickert also described a number of anecdotes between their parents.

Perhaps the most notable story involved the family hauling a very large oven which managed to fall on her husband. They recalled their mother being tremendously concerned about the broken glass only to have their father holler about moving the stove off him.

They also spoke to Baker’s general personality, with Mathews honing in on her honesty and character.

“She’s as honest as the day is long,” Mathews said. “But her famous saying is, ‘I tell it like it is,’ with a crooked index finger, too, as she’s pointing at you.”

Baker herself, looking back on her life, said the biggest piece of advice she has to offer folks is to love family and always be there for them, though she also encouraged folks to be proud of themselves and work hard every day at whatever they do.

“I love my kids. Every one of them,” Baker said. “Maybe they wonder how I can do that, but it’s easy when you love someone. It’s really easy. I love my children, every one of them, and I don’t love one of them any more than I do the other.”