Longtime Durango resident Maddy Surdey turned 100 Tuesday, officially earning her the title of centenarian – an honor held by only 0.03% of Americans, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Maddy, born Madeline Remus, has been a “tough broad” since she entered the world in 1926, according to her four children, Sharon, Allyn, Stephen and Patty.
Maddy has survived World War II, a broken hip, a concussion, motherhood, a divorce, depression and a pandemic – all while imparting humor and care on those around her, her children said.
The Durango Herald first met Maddy in 2020, when she was photographed speaking to Patty – her youngest daughter – through a window at the Four Corners Healthcare Center during a COVID-19 outbreak at the center.
Eighty-four residents, including Maddy, and 48 staff members contracted COVID, and three people died as of Dec. 12, 2020, according to San Juan Basin Public Health, the former public health department.
Allyn said the milestone birthday means even more after seeing her mother experience the outbreak in 2020.
“We were very fortunate that she got through,” she said. “We’re grateful for that.”
Maddy moved to the Cottonwood Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in 2023, where she has resided since.
Maddy grew up in Forest Park, Illinois, with her mother, father and older brother, Raymond, who was four years older and whom she greatly admired.
She gained her high school diploma from Proviso East High School in 1945, and married Al Surdey in January 1950. The pair moved the family from the suburbs of Chicago to Durango in 1971.
Maddy and Al’s separation in 1980 was amicable, said Sharon, who is the oldest of the four. The two continued to care for one another up until Al’s death 15 years ago.
Maddy worked a range of jobs, including as a shoe salesperson at Carson’s Department Store and later as an “elevator girl” at Marshall Field & Co. in Illinois in the mid-1940s, where she made a modest $1 an hour.
Maddy would turn the elevator crank for store visitors wearing fancy fur coats, she said – and would occasionally lay down the law when customers became ornery or too many people tried to get in the elevator at once.
“You know, I finally got to a point with these people,” Maddy said. “... They would push themselves in, (and I would say,) ‘Wait a minute. ... There’s just too many people in here. ... You get the (expletive) out of here.”
She carried a stick pin with her so she could physically prod people out of the elevator when capacity was reached, she said.
Maddy later worked at the Graden Mercantile department store in Durango, which opened at 781 Main Ave. in 1881.
Maddy didn’t drive until after her divorce, when she bought a Volkswagen Rabbit at age 57 with the money she had saved up from her various jobs. Before that, she biked to work every day from her home at 30th Street and West Third Avenue all the way to Graden’s, her children said.
“That’s one reason she’s lived so long – she was physically active,” Sharon said. “If she wanted to go somewhere, she would bike or walk.”
Maddy’s children describe her as a deeply caring person who taught the four of them many things, including how to cook, bake, roller skate, clean, do laundry and be caring people.
In part because of her experiences with her brother going off to serve in WWII and returning with post-traumatic stress disorder, she has struggled with depression, and spent much of her life trying to understand why war happens, her children said.
“She's been through quite a lot,” Allyn said. “She was born in 1926, (lived through) World War II, and then the following depression, and she lost her mom fairly early on. … She's been through a little bit. … Like anyone who’s 100 years old, right?”
Sharon described her mom as an “all-American girl,” and said she dreamed of joining the United Service Organizations during World War II to cheer up the soldiers.
She said her mom was her best friend when she was growing up, and that the two did everything together.
Maddy also taught Sharon how to be a mother to her own four children, she said.
“She taught me how to be a mom through her imperfections,” Sharon said. “Sometimes she looks at me and says, ‘Why don’t you hold this against me?’ ... Well, they say love is a continuous act of forgiveness, and that’s true.”
The children recalled endless colorful stories of Maddy from their childhoods and beyond, including her rocking out to Pink Floyd in the car, hopping into a kiddie pool in her clothes one summer, nursing an injured bird found on a walk back to health, collecting the prettiest rocks she could find, making birthday cakes from scratch with whipped cream frosting for the children’s birthdays and using $5 she found on the sidewalk to buy Sharon a toy from a nearby toy store.
“Mom put up with all of our craziness,” Sharon said. “She’s always been there for all of us, as a wife and a mom.”
Patty recalled through tears her mom standing steadfastly by her side as she healed from a life-altering car crash in 1992.
“I almost died – I broke my neck – and mom was there the entire time with me, every second,” she said.
Maddy wants to keep being there for her kids as she always has, Sharon said, but that’s harder now that she resides at Cottonwood and requires daily care.
“I say, ‘You can pray for us, mom,’” Sharon said.
Allyn said it’s been a blessing to have had so much time with her mother.
“Here I am, 72, and I still got her,” she said. “She can't remember what we had for breakfast, but she can remember what happened 50 years ago… We try to engage her as much as we can with memories, and we know we won't have her forever.”
Maddy, who celebrated the milestone birthday with a party Tuesday at Cottonwood, doesn’t see turning 100 as anything to fuss over.
“One day at a time – that’s all there is, one day at a time,” she said. “... Life’s a bowl of cherries, and then there are the pits. ... I’m glad to be here. So far, so good.”
Maddy said she plans to live until 111 – so this birthday is just one more notch in the belt.
epond@durangoherald.com
