Everyone Has A Story: Meet 100-year-old Lois

"How the hell did I get to 100? If I knew the secret, I’d bottle and sell it."

Photo credit: Lori Bresina

I was born and lived in the Los Angeles area most of my life. I had two brothers. I’ve outlived one of them.

My mother was a very unhappy person, and she made my life miserable. Shirley Temple was my salvation. In her movies, she always had a problem in the beginning, but everything turned out in the end. I always looked for my happy ending, but it took its time coming.

I started taking accordion lessons in my last year of high school. One year, my accordion band marched in the Rose Parade. I started playing accordion duets with my brother Dick. Someone saw our act and asked us to join the bond drive when the world war started.

Photo provided by Lois

We played at the Los Angeles Coliseum and hotels like the Biltmore to raise money for war bonds.

Then we joined Scotty’s USO Troop, and we traveled up and down California visiting military bases and entertaining the troops. Besides us, there were hula dancers, singers, Scottish highland fling dancers, baton twirlers, and hillbillies.

Photo provided by Lois

When the war ended, I was back living with my parents. I married my first husband to get out of my mother’s house. We were married for 17 years, but it should have been 17 months. He’s the father of my four children.

Six years later, I met Art when he walked through the door of the restaurant I worked at. Art was the love of my life. Those 22 years we were married were the best years.

Photo provided by Lois

Art was a handsome naval officer but had retired by the time we met. After his Navy career, he worked as the head chef at a swanky Whittier restaurant, so he didn’t like to cook at home. We’d eat out every night, often at the O Club, then we’d go dancing.

That man didn’t know what to do with a screwdriver, but he could dice an onion like nobody’s business.

One afternoon when Art was going to work, I told him, “I’d like to try to paint.” My father had been a commercial artist. I got straight As in art class.

“Go ahead,” Art said. He believed I could do anything.

One of the remaining oil paintings Lois painted.

I probably did 200 oil paintings and soon they were selling like hotcakes at the restaurant where Art worked. But a lot of them burned up in the fire that destroyed the hotel and restaurant.

After Art passed on, one of my alteration clients told me about being an extra in the movies. I applied at the casting office and was cast as an extra in “The Gilmore Girls,” “Murder She Wrote,” “Diagnosis Murder,” “Friends,” “Frazier,” and several others. You might have seen me lying in a coffin at the beginning of one of the “Six Feet Under” episodes.

Photo provided by Lois

My favorite star was Dick Van Dyke. He’d entertain us by singing and dancing. And he’d talk to us extras as equals.

I worked as a Hollywood extra for five years. This was the 1990s, before navigation. One day when I was driving home in the dark after a long shoot, I thought I’m 75, I’m getting too old for this. But I sure had fun while I was doing it.

Ten years ago, I lived in a senior community in the LA area but wanted to be closer to my children in case of an emergency. So, when I was 90, I packed myself up and moved to Tucson to be closer to my daughters. I also have a daughter in Northern Arizona and a son in Las Vegas.

My daughter discovered the 55+ senior community where I live now. The minute I saw the display case on the wall of the unit, I was sold. It’s the perfect place for my Shirley Temple figurine collection.

I like the community because everyone is nice, and I have my independence. Plus, I have enough room in my house for the rest of my Shirley Temple collection, especially the needlepoint Shirley Temple quilt I made after Art died. It helped me with my grief.

I’m a puzzle addict and after I moved to Tucson, I started going to McDonald’s up the street for a few hours to do crossword puzzles every day. A neighbor in my community who enjoyed Sudoku started coming with me. Soon we had a group of about a half dozen meeting over coffee. We call it our Happy Hour!

The only medication I take is a child’s dose of blood pressure medicine. When I visit the doctor each year, he says, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing it.”

I remember sitting on a patch of green grass when I was about five years old. The grass grows greener over the septic tank you know. While I watched my father mow the lawn, I wondered how old I’d be when I died.

I feel 60, but I don’t have the energy I used to. I still drive. I still do alterations for friends. But I broke my hip last year, so I have to be careful. My daughter wants me to move into assisted living where they are thinking about moving. I don’t want to. I like my independence.

I’m not afraid of dying, I’m just afraid of how I’ll die. Until then, I’ll keep myself busy and get out of the house every day to meet my coffee friends.

How the hell did I get to 100? If I knew the secret, I’d bottle and sell it.