Thriving on independence

Thelma A. Fitzgerald was born into the busy Courchaine farming family on Feb. 3, 1915. By the time she turned 6, she had cows to milk every morning – sometimes as many as 10 – she rode her horse everywhere, and she was in charge of the turkeys.

“I was an outside girl,” she said, sitting in her comfortable living room Monday in Greenacres. Her home is just down the road from the Courchaine homestead, which is one of the oldest in Spokane Valley.

Fitzgerald turns 100 years old Tuesday and her family is celebrating on Saturday at the Mirabeau Park Hotel. About 20 family members are traveling here from the East Coast to celebrate Fitzgerald.

“Can you believe it?” she asked, smiling. “They are all coming out here.”

Fitzgerald can see the homestead from her house, and she can see the Saltese School, which she first attended more than 90 years ago.

“One year, us six kids filled up the entire class,” Fitzgerald recalled.

She’s always been spirited – or mouthy as she calls it – and though she’s now living back where her life began, she’s had quite a journey.

Fitzgerald married her first husband when she was 17, and she did so without telling anybody at home.

“Mom wanted me to go to high school, so you bet I didn’t tell her,” Fitzgerald said. “Everyone thought we were an ideal couple – until I left him.”

She went from living on the farm to an apartment behind Deaconess Hospital and a job as a nurses’ aide. And she divorced.

“He bossed me around too much,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s not good.”

A boyfriend brought her to California for a brief stint, but that didn’t work out and soon she was on her way home – and she was broke.

She settled in Missoula where she got a job working at what she calls a rest home – a retirement home – which she eventually ended up running for 25 years.

“From (when) I got there and on out, I’ve been an independent,” Fitzgerald said, spelling out independent. Nobody ever bossed her around again.

She met and married the love of her life, Joe Fitzgerald, in Missoula.

A photo of the two of them together shows him with his arm around her, both beaming at each other and the camera.

“He really loved me,” Fitzgerald said, holding the photo.

In 1979, her dad needed her back at the farm in Greenacres. She packed up and headed home but didn’t quite make it in time.

“My dad died as soon as we got here,” Fitzgerald said.

She settled in on the farm with Joe and spent as much time as she could on her passion – horses. She still has distance riding trophies sitting in her living room.

“I loved riding my horse, I always loved riding,” she said, proudly showing a framed photo of Big Red and her at the end of a 50-mile ride. “I’ve had many good horses.” She sold her last horse 10 years ago because she couldn’t stand watching it out in the field, knowing that she could never get back on it and ride it.

In 1988, Joe Fitzgerald was killed in a farming accident.

Fitzgerald has a difficult time talking about how she found him pinned between a tractor and pickup truck, choked to death.

“I knew he was dead as soon as I found him,” she said.

By that time, the little bob-haired girl who used to ride her horse everywhere was past 70. Life had given her three children – JoAnn Goodard, Vernon Phillips and Lonnie Limbocker and today she has 13 grandchildren, and many more great- and great-great grandchildren.

“She has a heart that’s so full of love for her family,” said Marie Courchaine, who’s married to Fitzgerald’s nephew, Ken Courchaine. “She doesn’t forget people. She knows what’s going on with everyone.”

Fitzgerald eventually married again, this time to Ray Tipke, and the two live on their own in Greenacres.

The walls in the living room are covered in paintings by her son Vernon Phillips. He died in 2009.

So what does it feel like to be almost 100 years old?

Fitzgerald laughs.

“It feels just like any other day,” she said. “Can you believe it doesn’t feel much different?”

Fitzgerald is not nostalgic for the old days, though she misses her horses and a time when neighbors were “neighborly” and stopped in and checked on each other.

One highlight of her life was a trip to Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece and Italy with one of her clients at the rest home in Missoula.

“I was gone for about a month,” Fitzgerald said, “and I got baptized in the river Jordan.”

She believes in celebrating birthdays – “because you never know if you’re gonna have another one” – and in staying independent.

“I’ve had a wonderful life so far,” Fitzgerald said. “I’ve been blessed.”