ENTERPRISE — She’s going to turn 100 years old Feb. 20, and she’s still as sharp as a tack.

Amy Lou (Louise) Werst is one of the very senior residents of the Wallowa Valley Senior Living Center’s Enterprise facility and she’s looking forward to that milestone.

“I was born Feb. 20, 1925, in St Francis Hospital in Baker City, Ore.” Werst said in an interview Friday, Feb. 14.

At the time, her parents and grandparents lived in a town near Baker City, as her father, grandfather and great-uncle worked on the railroad that ran near there. She couldn’t remember the name of the small town where they lived then.

Her hometown was “one half a day from Baker to that place, and so I’d go back with my grandfather and spend the weekend, then with with my grandmother,” she said. “I didn’t want to do this, but my mother felt so bad about her mom happened to be living alone in that big old house,” after her grandfather had died.

“My grandfather had built her a new home. You should see it. It’s still a new home.

It’s still standing,” she said. “But he had died, and she was all alone. And so I told her, ‘OK, I when I was a junior in high school, so I didn’t go to Wallowa my junior year. I went to Baker,” she said. “Then my they got a house (for her grandmother) they sold their homes and bought a little house in town where they could get doctor treatments.”

Her parents were Vern and Amy Marie (Salisbury) Brätt. She was the oldest of four kids, having a younger sister — who lived well into her 90s — and two brothers, who died considerably younger.

Around the Northwest

Although she spent most of her life in Northeastern Oregon, she also lived in Spokane, Washington, and Spirit Lake, Idaho.

Some of her fondest memories were from Spirit Lake, between Coeur d’Alene and Spokane.

“I spent my first five years of school at Marcus Whitman in Spokane, Washington,” she recalled, saying it was a stone building like the Bowby Building in Enterprise.

“Thirty years later, we went back to see it, because we had a home there by it, and it was no longer there,” she said. “They had demolished it and it was a little new one.”

From Spokane and she moved to Spirit Lake. There, she got into sports, excelling in basketball and volleyball and went to an Idaho state tournament in Coeur d’Alene in eighth grade. She graduated eighth grade as the class valedictorian. But it was the lake at Spirit Lake she has the fondest memories of.

“I loved to swim and I was quite good at it,” she said.

After eighth grade, Werst moved to Wallowa for most of her high school career. The exception was her junior year when she returned to Baker City to spend time with her grandmother.

While in Wallowa, Werst recalled, her father was working at a sawmill there as a saw filer and a wildfire threatened the area. She was told to get her younger siblings to bed but be ready to evacuate. Sure enough, the fire threatened the town — and even burned the mill where her father worked — and he told her to get the younger kids dressed and ready to move out. She recalls that her penchant for swimming led her to put on her swim suit first and then her snow pants.

Ranch wife

After high school, Werst didn’t go to college and was pleased with the life of a ranch wife.

She did work outside the home, having worked at the Wallowa Memorial Hospital, at the Chieftain and, of course, on the farm.

“I always wanted to live on a farm,” she said.

She and husband, Norman, had three ranches in Wallowa County, two of which were adjacent to each other. There, they raised their sons Kevin and Mark. Mark had a son, Jason, who was a champion runner.

“I think some of his records still stand,” she says proudly.

But Jason, unfortunately, died young of cancer. Mark, too, is deceased, and Kevin lives in Astoria. He has a daughter, Haley, who has yet to marry.

“She just keeps going to school,” Werst laughed .

She said that she and Norman moved into the senior center together when she needed medical care. She didn’t figure he would make it on his own.

“Poor Norman, never learned how to cook,” she said. “He could make coffee and that’s about it.

Once they got into the senior center, he “deliberately died,” as he just quit eating. They moved into the center in early 2021 and he was gone by Easter.

As for what got her to 100, she said she never really pondered that. She attributes it largely to eating well and her penchant for athletics.

“I always had enough to eat, even in the hard times,” Werst said, adding that as a farm family, they always grew a garden.

She said she’s always remained healthy, for the most part.

“Except I couldn’t have kids when I wanted to,” she laughed.

Who: Amy Lou Werst

When: 2-4 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025

Where: Wallowa Valley Senior Living

Goal: Send 100 cards for her birthday