JOSEPH — How many people can say they’ve lived in Wallowa County for an entire century?

Come Tuesday, Dec. 7, Adelyne Marks can.

Her parents, Clyde and Cynthia Sanders, had moved from Waitsburg, Washington. They raised cattle at a ranch on Trout Creek north of Enterprise. But come December 1921 — with Cynthia Sanders expecting — the couple decided a place in town would be a safer place to give birth.

“They had children who were school aged and it was not a good time of the year to be 8-9 miles out there,” Addie said during an interview late last month.

As a result, her mother moved to town renting a house at Depot and Greenwood streets with the four older siblings who went to school.

“She stayed there until after I was born and then moved back out to the ranch,” Marks said.

Farm life

But the Trout Creek ranch wasn’t to be the permanent home.

“At that time, it was a tough time farming,” she said. “When I was 3, they moved to a farm on Alder Slope. Of course, there we’d have everything you’d have on a farm — pigs, cows, chickens, all that. We all grew up there.”

“All” means her three older sisters, an older brother and a younger brother.

But then, when Marks was just 5, her father died of multiple sclerosis at just 37 years old.

“That left my mother with six children,” she said. “After a few years, she married again to a very nice man, George Chandler.”

She recalls the difficult times in those early years.

“It was hard times, very hard times in the ‘30s,” she said of the Depression years. “But on the farm, we had everything we wanted. Had very little money, but we had milk cows and sold the cream. For that cream, you didn’t get much.”

She said their Jersey cows produced milk with a high butterfat content. The family would store the cream in a 5-gallon can in cool place. That produced some of their limited income.

“You might get $3 and something out of that can,” Marks recalled.

That money was used to buy sugar for preserving foods and flour to make bread.

“Most people were in the same place as we were,” she said. “We learned to do without and that didn’t hurt us a bit.”

Work for a farm kid was varied.

“Growing up, we learned to do all kinds of jobs around the farm. That’s the way it was,” she said. “In our day-to-day living, we all worked at something. We learned how to milk cows. We helped in the hay fields. I always like that time of year, harvest.”

She also recalled fondly the work of harvesting hay and wheat with horse-drawn implements.

“I liked those times in the summer,” she said.

But it wasn’t all work.

“I always read a lot. I’d go to the library and get a couple books — that was all you could get was two books,” Marks said. “I’d be reading all the time, except when I had to do something else.”

Helping her mom was a primary chore.

“We had to pick raspberries and had to pick gooseberries. They were something to pick,” she said. “We picked strawberries, helped in the garden, helped plant the potatoes. Had lots of 4-H clubs.”

In 4-H, she recalled sewing and raising a calf.

“You had to learn how to crochet,” she said. “You could also have an animal, and I had a calf, and you showed them at the fair.”

There also was fun on the farm.

“An irrigation ditch that ran along the top of the property and irrigated all along Alder Slope. That was our swimming pool,” she said. “It was only about 2 feet deep, but that was our swimming pool.”

She also recalls going to the one-room Reavis School before graduating from Enterprise High School. Coming home from school could be fun in the winter.

“After school was out, we’d take our sleds up the hill from the school and give a run and we could coast down almost to where we lived,” she said.

Marriage and war

Marks graduated from EHS in 1939. That fall, she married Mark Benjamin Marks, who later went onto become Enterprise police chief and Wallowa County sheriff before retiring in 1971.

Then there was her 20th birthday — Dec. 7, 1941.

“My husband and his cousin and her husband invited us over for dinner on my birthday,” Marks recalled. “While we were there, my husband and him happened to be out in his machine shop … and they had the radio on. They heard it over the radio. Then they came and told us.”

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor kind of soured their planned meal.

“We hadn’t had dinner yet. We went ahead and had dinner, but we really weren’t into thinking about dinner,” she said. “After that, everything was something different.”

She also recalls hearing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech before Congress the next day, Dec. 8, when he asked Congress to declare that a state of war existed between the U.S. and Japan.

Over the next few days, there were continued news reports of Japanese attacks on British Malaya, Midway, Thailand, the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong and others.

“And that was my 20th birthday,” Marks said.

That was a defining moment for her generation, much like Sept. 11, 2001, was for the current generation.

“We were interested in everything (FDR) said,” she said. “We were trying to picture what it would be like. … But in those days, it was just listening to the radio. But we liked him. We liked Roosevelt.”

Mark Marks served briefly in the Army during World War II. He was drafted in July 1945, but by then, the war was nearly over.

She remains baffled why Mark was drafted that late in the war, being a farmer and the father of three children.

“In December of that year, the president (Harry Truman) said that any man with three or more children was automatically discharged. So he was in there from July to December. He went through basic training,” but never went overseas.

Elder son, Dan, who still lives in Joseph, was 5 when his dad came home, and daughter Ella Mae was 3. Younger son, Sam, was born in 1945.

Both Marks’ sons entered the U.S. Naval Air Force — Dan in 1958 and Sam in 1964. They both saw duty in Vietnam. However, Sam was the victim of a fatal car crash while stationed in California and died in 1966.

Dan Marks also has fond memories of growing up in Wallowa County.

“We had a good time growing up,” he said. “Our parents were very involved in all our activities.”

Ella Mae Hays looks back on her mother’s life as typical of the “greatest generation,” facing the Depression and World War II.

“She triumphed through tough times,” she said.

Mark and Addie raised their kids at 204 May St. in Enterprise. Then, they moved to a home at 300 NE 1st St. where she lived for 50 years. She remained there until two years ago — age 98 — when she moved into the Alpine House in Joseph.

Ella Mae said that house wasn’t suitable for when Addie Marks began having problems with her knees.

“I hated to give that up very much, but my house wasn’t equipped for a wheelchair,” Addie said.

Postwar life

Since the war, Marks focused on raising her children and spending time with her husband.

She also decided to go to work. She spent 25 years working at what was then the First National Bank in Enterprise, retiring in 1980.

After the kids were grown and they retired, they traveled a lot. They became “snowbirds,” spending each winter for 20 years in Bullhead City, Arizona, along the Colorado River.

“We enjoyed traveling. We were gone from about November until March,” she said.

But did she ever desire to live somewhere else?

“Well, not really,” she said. “My husband and I, we traveled in several states. We went to Alaska; we loved Alaska, but this place is pretty hard to beat. It’s a good place.”

When Mark Marks died in 2002, Addie was 80. She then got involved in various organizations around town.

Mark had been a Mason and Addie was a member of the women’s group, Order of the Eastern Star. She also was involved with the American Legion, PEO (a philanthropic educational organization to help people go to school), worked at the Wallowa County Museum in Joseph and the SMART Program (Start Making A Reader Today) to read to or have kids read to her.

Hitting the century mark

Reaching 100 was never something Marks expected, although longevity is in her family. All five of her siblings lived into their 80s.

“I didn’t suppose I ever would, but I didn’t ever give it much thought,” Marks said. “It creeps up on you.”

And for her second century?

“I haven’t looked that far ahead yet,” she said. “I’ll just do what I can, which isn’t much. I enjoy my family and I enjoy it here.”