“Oh, my God!” Tiedje told Barbara Alonzo on the way home. “I can see leaves on the trees!”
It was, Alonzo says, like a miracle. Her mother’s extreme near-sightedness had kept her from ever getting a driver’s license, and she had spent a lifetime squinting through Coke bottle-bottom glasses.
There was nothing flashy about her mother’s life, Alonzo says, but it was still a remarkable one.
Tiedje died May 30 at the age of 99, just two months shy of her 100th birthday, and consider:
“She didn’t give up cigarettes until she was 70 years old.
“She never had decent vision until the age of 75.
“She lived independently until the age of 98.
“And, after being widowed way back in 1962, she got most everywhere she needed to go on foot.
“I remember her driving just one time in my life,” Alonzo says. “We were living in Valley City (N.D.), I was about 7, my dad was out of town for the weekend and mom wanted to go to church.
“I think she had driven country roads when she was younger, but she never got a driver’s license. She put me in the car and I think we took every alley in Valley City to get to the church and back - and we were both nervous wrecks by the time it was over.”
Born in 1908, Tiedje was the sixth of 14 children, and the last survivor of her generation.
“All those deaths,” Alonzo says. “I remember I’d get the phone calls - Uncle Donald had passed on, or Aunt Dorothy - and I’d have to go tell mom another one was gone. But I never saw her carry on about it - she always took the news and went on.”
Tiedje grew up on farms in Minnesota and North Dakota, working for families as a “hired girl” after she graduated from high school.
On a trip back to Minnesota to visit one of her sisters, Lil met one of the sons of the farmer next door. A Depression-era romance with Merv Tiedje blossomed, and when he was done with work on his father’s farm, Merv picked potatoes on others to earn enough money to pay for a marriage license.
They moved to Valley City and worked on farms until Merv landed a job at the Coast to Coast hardware store. In 1942, he was transferred to Livingston to manage the Coast to Coast store there - the owner had been drafted into World War II - and in 1945, Merv and Lil bought the Coast to Coast store in Polson.
“She always worked, she was always busy,” Alonzo says. “Mom worked side by side with my dad in the store. She never whined about anything. It was always, 'That’s the way it is, let’s make the best of it.’ ”
Lil and Merv loved to dance, and Lil especially enjoyed their annual winter trip to wherever the national Coast to Coast convention was being held.
After Merv died unexpectedly of a heart attack, 46 years ago at the age of 54, Lil sold the store and went to work for the competition in Polson - Davis Hardware.
She moved into an apartment near downtown, and walked everywhere - to work, to the grocery store, and yes, to church.
Alonzo credits the physical activity to her mother’s longevity.
“You know, they all smoked back then, even doctors and nurses” she says. “I’m sure they partied - they probably drank white lightning during Prohibition - and mom loved bacon and eggs. She wasn’t a gourmet cook, it was a real meat-and-potatoes diet. She probably didn’t quit smoking until she was 70. It really makes you wonder. But she always did a lot of walking, because she didn’t drive a car.”
Tiedje worked at Davis Hardware until she turned 65, then retired and moved to Missoula for the last 34 years of her life.
There, she enjoyed traveling, and reveled in the family life of her only child. Barb and John Alonzo have six children, and they in turn gave Lil 12 great-grandchildren, who range in age from 3 to 22.
“There’s always a birthday party to go to in this family,” Alonzo says. “And Mother was a phone person. She’d call all the kids’ houses and talk to anyone who answered the phone, adult or child. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren were her pride and joy.”
Amazingly, after a second cataract was removed from her other eye at the age of 75, Tiedje never needed more than reading glasses.
A stroke 10 years ago slowed her momentarily, but after she recovered, she moved into Burlington Square Apartments and continued to live independently for nine more years.
“It’s not an assisted living place but Mike, the manager, organizes bingo games and potlucks, and everybody there seems to watch out for each other and socialize,” Alonzo says.
Finally, at the age of 98 and having survived colon cancer, Tiedje moved into Village Health Care.
On many Mondays, granddaughter Juli Yobst would bring great-grandchildren Molli and Mac out to participate in “Music in Motion” with Lil. Tiedje would have her nails done on Tuesdays, loved it when visiting musicians would come to entertain, and never missed a bingo game.
She stayed active almost to the end. The last of Mary and Arthur Tougas’ 14 children, she outlived half of a huge band of nieces and nephews as well.
Many of the rest will gather over the last weekend of July with the Alonzos at the Flathead Lake cabin Lil and Merv bought more than half a century ago.
They were already coming for Lillian Tiedje’s 100th birthday, but now they’ll gather to celebrate her 99 years of life.
“Actually, 99 and 10/12ths,” Alonzo says. “She really wanted to make it to 100. And she almost did.”
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