Scott Swanson
Genevieve Rice can’t see any more and visitors have to talk loudly to be heard, but there’s nothing wrong with her mind as she celebrates her 100th birthday Friday, Aug. 12.
She had a little trouble with a few dates (but so does a reporter half her age).
She’s lived in Sweet Home nearly all her life, most of it with her husband James “Lynn” Rice, who died in 2006, shortly after they celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary.
Rice was born Aug. 12, 1911 on a 62-acre farm on Oak Terrace to Clara and William Daughterty, the second of three children. The family farm included much of what is now the area between 5th and 8th avenues, she said. After her father died, when she was 9, her mother parceled the land off and sold it.
She attended grade school at Long Street Elementary, after it was built, and before that, at a school in the Mountain View area.
At Sweet Home Union High School she was active in girls sports, playing basketball and softball.
“I don’t know how much of an athlete I was,” Rice said.
She said she remembers the weather being different when she was young, which made it easier to have outdoor sports in the spring and early summer.
“We had better weather than now,” she said. “It was colder in the winter but summer was earlier and nicer.”
She said she remembers playing basketball with six girls on the team – two guards, two forwards and two centers – one more than are on the court in today’s game. They played primarily against Crabtree, Tangent and Scio teams.
“The boys got to play against a lot more different teams than we did,” she said.
She got interested in Lynn, one of her 11 classmates in the Class of 1929, during her senior year.
After graduation, she attended Pacific Cosmetic College in Portland, then returned to Sweet Home, where she and Lynn were married Nov. 27, 1930 in her mother’s house on Oak Terrace. They lived in Jordan Valley and Alsea before settling down in Sweet Home in 1932, where Lynn got a job as a sawyer at a local mill.
Genevieve said she worked in local beauty shops “whenever they wanted me” and, at one point, attempted to start her own shop. That didn’t work out when the building owner decided to do something else with the building, she said.
“I just quit, except when people wanted it.”
Lynn built a house at 451 Oak Terrace, a few doors down from her mother’s place. There she raised their three children, Lila, Kathleen and Jim.
She was a founding member of the Sweet Home United Methodist Church in 1948, serving as recording steward, secretary for the church board, women’s society member and Memorial Committee member.
She also volunteered as a Girl Scout leader and trainer and in the schools when she wasn’t gardening, making cards, sewing and doing calligraphy – all hobbies.
“Lynn didn’t really want me to work,” she said. “I spent most of my time raising the kids.”
After the children grew up and Lynn retired from Clear Lumber in 1975, they traveled often, visiting Mexico, Hawaii, Alaska, Yellowstone and more. Lynn eventually lost his sight and Genevieve said she spent a lot of time reading to him.
“I had to read his magazines and I ordered books for him,” she said.
Her own eyesight has deteriorated to the point that she is blind, but she said she expected it because doctors told her she had a form of optic neuropathy. After Lynn died she moved to a retirement home in Lebanon for a short time, then settled at Wiley Creek Community when a room opened up there.
Her children, Lila Stepanek, Kathleen Jones and Jim Rice, live in Medford, Las Vegas and Portland, and she has six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, none of whom live close.
Genevieve has long outlived her brother and sister and she’s not sure why.
“Land, it does seem like it’s been 100 years,” she said. “I don’t have a secret. You just live. I think the good Lord just gives you so far to live and that’s how long you’re going to live.”