It’s not every day that someone in Durango turns 100 – much less 104 – but one resident has hit both of these milestones. Allene Pera, who lives at Sunshine Gardens Senior Community, celebrated her 104th birthday Wednesday with a party.
Pera was born in Nucla in 1915 either at her home or the home of another family member, as there was not a hospital in her town, said Donna Burr, Pera’s daughter.
Pera had one husband – Walter Pera – who she was married to for almost 70 years before he passed. They married in the basement of the Montrose Courthouse in 1936 because they did not have the money for a wedding.
Pera and her husband had five children, and she spent her life as a homemaker, washing clothes for five kids without a dryer. In 1939, they moved to Tomboy for a year, a now-abandoned ghost town at an elevation of 11,509 feet. Her husband had taken a job with the power company working to monitor power for Silverton, Ouray and Telluride and would live in what was already considered a ghost town.
Pera and her husband moved to Electra Lake where they spent 15 years raising their children. They also spent time in Telluride, Cascade Creek, Nucla and Durango when they were married.
She spent her recreation time jeeping with her husband. Burr said the first jeep they had was a surplus jeep from World War II. When they lived in Nucla, she would spend her time hunting for dinosaur bones and playing cards with friends.
Pera said her greatest accomplishment in life is raising her children.
“I think I did a good job,” Pera said in an interview Wednesday with The Durango Herald.
She sees this as an accomplishment because they turned out so well, she said.
Burr said Pera has too many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren to count.
In 2018, for the Fourth of July parade in Rico, she was named the grand marshal and got to ride in a convertible Cadillac.
Pera said the secret to longevity is one’s attitude toward life.
“Just laugh and be happy,” she said.
She said Wednesday that as she turns 104 she doesn’t feel any worse or better than she did years ago.
She continues to walk daily, make her own bed and work on her sewing and crocheting. And she works with her daughter, Burr, to make quilts for the needy. Pera donates the quilts she makes to hospitals and safe houses as part of a national group of woman quilters called Project Linus.
bmandile@durangoherald.com
A journey to give birth
The year was 1939, and Allene Pera and her husband, Walter, were living in Tomboy – an abandoned mining town at 11,509 feet in elevation above Telluride.
When they moved to Tomboy for Walter’s job, they knew they would be isolated and would be snowed in at times. They prepared what they needed, including stocking a year’s worth of food for themselves and their2-year-old son. There was no hospital in town, which meant Allene would have to make her way down the mountain to give birth.
In February 1920, Pera and her husband made the journey to deliver a child. The road was snowed covered, so Walter made a toboggan for his son, while he and his wife snowshoed a mile to the entrance of a mine. When they entered the mine, they had to climb down wet ladders that were slick – Walter strapped his son to his back and told him to hold on tight. They made it into a mine car and rode to the front of the mountain, but they were only halfway through the journey.
The Peras used tram buckets to make their way to the valley floor. Eventually, they made their way out of the mine and down to Telluride, where Allene gave birth to Donna Pera, now Donna Burr, at the local hospital. After a year of living in Tomboy, the family left and moved to Electra Lake near Durango.
Benjamin Mandile
