Durangoan Josefita Herrera – Josie to her friends and family – turned 104 years old Thursday and showed no indication that she’s slowing down anytime soon.
Born June 14, 1914, in Chimayó, New Mexico, Herrera was the oldest of 11 children, and had six sisters and four brothers growing up. Her youngest sister Mary Chavez, who lives in Farmington, is her only sibling still alive today.
Her family moved to Ignacio and she started working when she was 14 years old at a local laundromat, where she washed and ironed clothes the next seven years for 25 cents an hour. Sometimes she was able to work overtime for 35 cents an hour if she got lucky.
She married Jose Herrera, a carpenter at the time, when she was 29 years old. They lived on a ranch in Ignacio and she helped him farm and take care of the home until he died about 35 years ago. She moved to Durango shortly after.
“She has no children and lives by herself. She cooks, cleans and takes care of herself without much assistance and she still has all her faculties,” her friend Julie Cordova, who works with AARP in Durango, said. “She’s really just an amazing woman.”
Although she never had children, Herrera is surrounded by friends and relatives who love, support and spend time with her. She and Cordova have been friends for more than 30 years, and her niece Carmella Olguin is her primary caregiver and helps her with whatever she needs when she isn’t working. She even has several nephews in the area who spoil her and bring her wine, Olguin said.
Although she said that events tend to blur together after more than a century, she remembers a time that few people are lucky enough to have experienced.
As the eldest, Herrera quickly became a caretaker figure in her family. Instead of going to school, she took care of her brothers and sisters and remembers driving them, plus two other kids who lived nearby, to and from school in a horse-drawn wagon. She said that the commute took 2½ hours each way.
Even in the last year, she’s experienced some new things. For example, around Easter, she survived a rollover car crash in Hesperus with her niece Viola, who was driving her to Cortez. The crash reinjured her back, but she walked away with mere bruises, after first responders finally noticed she was in the backseat, at 103 years old.
Although she jokes about how old she is, her will to live is stronger than ever. The car crash was an experience that proved it.
“I was praying to St. Anthony to please protect me,” she said. “I saw the prettiest stars ...” In jest, she explained that the stars were actually specs on the windshield that were gleaming in the sunlight.
Herrera only had one general doctor’s appointment during the last year, which was brief because it was obvious to the doctor that she’s healthy. She shared a few of her secrets that she believes helped her live this long, one of them being “mind over matter.”
“When you’re sick, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Don’t concentrate on the sickness. I just ignore it and keep doing what I’m doing ... And here I am.”
She went to a chiropractor after hurting her back and regularly sees a physical therapist at Mercy Regional Medical Center. Cordova and Olguin said the doctors at the clinic are astounded by her vitality and willingness to keep exercising and pushing her body.
“She’s usually up for anything and always ready to go,” Olguin said.
She gets one of her nieces to drive her to the Sky Ute Casino Resort in Ignacio a few times a month to play the slots and eat dinner. Herrera, Cordova and Olguin agreed that she has a complicated relationship with the slot machines.
“I know the machines,” she said. She continued to say she knows which machines are the winners, threatens to punish them if she doesn’t do well and prays to them to ensure she leaves the casino with more money than when she arrived.
Herrera is as tough and adventurous as she is warm, also. She used to take hunting trips on horseback with her husband, has traveled to Italy, Mexico and Hawaii, and still travels all over the Four Corners.
Her life presently is relatively routine and she keeps busy every day. She sews and fixes clothes by hand, is a great cook and uses the same collection of herbs from her childhood. She still drinks red wine and watches “The Price is Right” and “Jeopardy!” She has even been known to hang up the phone on someone if the show starts before the conversation is over, Olguin said.
A doctor used to check on her at home and kept a record of how much wine she had since his last visit. Little did he know, sometimes it was a new bottle.
She speaks English perfectly well, though she’s more confident speaking Spanish. Cordova translated when it was difficult for her to communicate exactly what she wanted in English.
Having only completed up to second grade in school, she is impressively keen to learn new things. She taught herself to read English just based on its the phonetic similarities to Spanish, for instance.
“If you take the effort to learn something, you can learn it,” she said.
Herrera is living proof that the mental and physical sides of longevity are intertwined and, she said, the most important thing a person can do is stay busy. Living a purposeful life and always taking advantage of the opportunity to learn something new, even from difficult experiences, helps strengthen the brain and body to keep going.
A party to celebrate her birthday will be held Saturday at Oxford Grange. Relatives and friends from the Four Corners, Denver, Idaho and Florida are planning to spend time with her that day. Olguin said they’ve had big birthday parties for her every year since she turned 100 to celebrate her warm personality and vibrant life, which seems like it might just last forever.
fstone@durangoherald.com
