Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

WORLAND - Eula Jene Willard turned 90 Monday celebrating the event with her many friends and family at the Worland Senior Citizens Center.

On Feb. 19, 1928, Eugene Leonard and Cliffy Belle Evans welcomed their youngest child Eula Jene Willard to the family joining two brothers and a sister. She was born in Worland in the house on the corner of 15th and Howell and lived there until she married her husband Hugh Willard Jr. who had been her classmate for many years and beau for about a year.

"When I lived on the corner of Howell and 15th, we were way out in the country. I didn't have many boyfriends until late high school because nobody wanted to walk out there and get me and take me anyplace. When we finally got old enough to drive a vehicle, if they could talk their parents out of a vehicle I would sometimes get a date. When my husband and I were going together, I could look out my upstairs bathroom window and I could see his house from my house, he lived on Pulliam Ave and there were no obstructions, no houses, no big trees or anything. So if I was upstairs I could look out and I could see, most of the time if I was looking at the right time, I could see when he was leaving his house to come and pick me up so then I could be ready. That was before all those houses were built between, it was all farmland. It was all farmland from Pulliam north. All that out east of town has been built; there was nothing out there but farms," Willard said.

Together the couple had three children, a son and two daughters, who were born in what was the Worland hospital at the time and now houses the Washakie County Library.

Over the years Willard worked a variety of jobs from farm wife to jack-of-all trades at Meadowlark Lodge, but her favorite jobs were the jobs working with children when she reached retirement age. "After I reached retirement age I was a foster grandparent in the school system for about six years, then I went to work as a paraeducator in the middle school for about six years and then back as a foster grandparent for another five or six years. I've got a lot of children around town who every once in a while when I run into one, they still call be grandma. I would still be working there if I could see and hear but my eyesight has become so poor that I can't do much to help any of the children anymore. But that was one job that I really loved. I loved being with those children and helping them learn to read and do math and all kinds of things," Willard said.

Willard explained that at one time Worland was a booming community with a population of about 8,200 during the oil boom. She stated that people would sort of trickle in before the boom but the population increased quickly after. "We had shops galore downtown. There wasn't an empty storefront downtown. We had several clothing stores, at one time we had four grocery stores and we had two or three drug stores," Willard said. "Everybody went to town on Saturday night especially in the winter time. It wasn't that way in the summer; you worked from dawn until well passed sunset because if you were a farmer your hours were long. That was after you got your chores done, you got your bath taken, got all cleaned up and had the supper dishes done. You went to town and did all your shopping and visited with your neighbors. Kids, a lot of the time, went to the movies if there was a good one playing," she added.

Speaking of how things changed, Willard said that she remembers having ice boxes, then refrigerators and then freezers. She remembers having an electric washing machine which required the user to haul and pour clean water into it and required hauling out the dirty water in buckets.

A major memory she has is of when her brother was in the hospital and an airplane crashed into her family's root cellar when she was about 6. "That was when Tim Paris was killed; he was one of the local people. My understanding was that he was in the market to buy a plane. They had taken him up in the plane and I don't know what happened because we were in town because my brother was in the hospital with a broken arm. The airplane was circling and lost power or something and nosed dived right into the root cellar. I was quite young. The hospital got the call and my mother was visiting my brother and I was walking the streets because I didn't want to sit in the hospital. I was out wandering the streets window shopping and stuff when all of a sudden I saw my mother and sister in the car and they were going pretty fast down Main Street. I thought 'mother left me, how come?' So I thought well I guess I will have to walk home, so I walked home and when I got home I found out there was an airplane in the root cellar," Willard said.

Willard stated that the secret to her longevity is keeping active and leading a healthy lifestyle. She said that she never smoked and very infrequently consumes alcohol. Being active is one of the main secrets, that and enjoying both life and people. "I think that's the secret. I watched a lot of my friends, they retired and they went home, sat on the couch did nothing, had no hobbies, no interests in life so they just sat down and pretty soon they were gone. But those of us who stayed active are still here," she said.

She went on to explain that the senior center and her friends also play a big part in her longevity. "I go to the senior center; you don't go and just sit there and eat and leave. You've got to kind of add intelligent conversation with the group you are with and I usually eat at a table where there's lots of conversations going on all the time. We try not to be exclusive; we try to include anyone that comes around. If we don't know them we try to introduce ourselves and get to know who they are. I think that's kind of the secret, you can't be standoffish and shy, you've got to meet people half way because they are probably as reluctant to speak up as you are. You just have to enjoy life and enjoy people," she added.

Willard is the sole survivor of both her and her husband's family, having lost her sister at the age of 98 about a month ago and a brother who became missing in action during the Korean War. But she has her three children, seven grandchildren and many great-grandchildren to keep her young and help celebrate birthdays yet to come.