A Millstadt resident who attends Concord Presbyterian Church in Waterloo recently reached one of the most significant milestones anyone can achieve.

Janice Nolen celebrated her 100th birthday at the church on May 5, surrounded by friends and family who had come to visit from out of town.

Following the festivities, Nolen spoke with the Republic-Times to share a little bit about her life.

She grew up in Perry, a city in Northwest Missouri, which she described as a rather humble farming community a century ago.

“Some of my relatives came to that area when there was nothing but prairie grass,” Nolen said. “I think it was my great-grandfather, his mother rode from Louisiana through prairie grass carrying her year-old son.”

Nolen walked to and from her rural school each day regardless of weather. She distinctly recalled wearing her mother’s coat to school in terribly freezing cold.

Like her parents, she also attended the high school in Perry. She continued her education for a time in Kirksville, Mo., where she would learn to teach.

Nolen’s professional career, as she described, lasted for just about three years of teaching during World War II.

Following her brief career in education, her focus turned to life on the farm with her husband. She recalled how she’d known his sister as a kid, and the families had lived about two miles apart through their youth.

She would go on to have six children, with five of them – none twins – being born within six and a half years.

The family lived in a pre-Civil War house, and Nolen put in plenty of work raising chickens, gardening, gathering from fruit trees on the property, tending to the farm’s cows and sewing clothing.

While the family produced a great deal of their diet, Nolen recalled how they would sell leftover eggs and cream as well as some of her sewn garments to pay for additional groceries and necessities.

On top of all these responsibilities, Nolen also cooked three meals from scratch each and every day, which contributed greatly to her still strong love of cooking.

Life for the family carried on through the years, at one point getting rid of their house and moving closer to the nearby highway.

Nolen and her husband eventually divorced. Living by herself and with much of her family moved elsewhere, her daughter encouraged her to move closer to her in Smithton in 1999.

“It was just me in that house,” Nolen said. “It was starting to need replacements. My daughter had met her husband and moved to here in Smithton, and she said ‘Well, why don’t you come down here?’”

Nolen has, in recent years, been living in a charming, renovated house, eager to avoid moving into a nursing home for fear of the food.

On top of her childhood and life on the farm, she recalled a number of distinct memories such as hearing about the election between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith or receiving news about Charles Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic Ocean.

On the topic of airplanes, Nolen further remembered running out of her house as a child to see whether any aircraft flying overhead was a biplane or a monoplane, and she had a distinct memory of seeing a dirigible balloon.

Nolen also spoke about how her mother would drive a car, parking on hills so she could get it started by herself as she wasn’t able to crank the engine as was necessary for those vehicles.

Touching on some of the differences between life today and back then, Nolen placed particular emphasis on natural farming and food, bemoaning the additions and changes that have been made to farming.

“There are a lot of things to be said for the old days,” Nolen said.

She further espoused her affinity for home remedies, taking care of simple ailments with tea and other approaches.

Asked if she attributed her longevity to any specific factor, she noted that she doesn’t smoke or drink – or cuss – and she drank lots of milk when she was younger.

Nolen also pointed out that her father’s side of the family seems to be generally quite long-lived.