Centenarian Man
A Shoshone old-timer reminisces about the 20th
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
SHOSHONE--Everyones
amazed. Elwood Werrys second wife, Norma, said hes eaten bacon and eggs
forever. His caretaker said hes the sharpest person shes ever taken care of.
Even Elwood Werry himself cant believe its true.
"Ive often wondered how Ive stayed alive as long as I
have," he reflected at his home in Shoshone, grinning, pausing for effect,
"because we used to do some stupid things."
Werry is 100 years and 3 months old.
He talked to a reporter on Thursday in the living room of his one-story
ranch style house on the Little Wood River which runs behind his backyard.
Dressed in blue pajamas and a maroon bathrobe, he had recently awoke in
time for the interview. Displaying good physical health, several times he got to his feet
and retrieved documents. Whats more, his good humor often surfaced while recounting
anecdotes sprinkled throughout his long life.
When he was a kid, he said he shot at dynamite sticks from 20 feet
away, trying unsuccessfully to blow them up. He even smoked scraps of reed from a
discarded baby buggy, trying to emulate adult smokers. As a young man, he was "an
ordinary guy," he said, "got drunk every once in a while, smoked
cigarettes." There were plenty of things that could have killed him.
Werry is the first to admit he doesnt know the secret to
longevity any better than the next person, but if its true that a long, happy life
depends on having a purpose and staying active, then he is a living example of that.
Werry has even outlived the hamlet in which he was born on July 13,
1899. Doniphen, once situated just west of Hailey, was a gold mining community, but its
"surface gold" ran out quickly, Werry said. He spent his youth in Broadford, now
part of Hailey, attending a one-room school house.
"We didnt have the modern conveniences we have now," he
said, "but we used to have some great times up there in the Wood River Valley.
Theres some great fishing, you know."
He reminisced about the "big spawners" he would catch in the
Big Wood River, and how he would watch the males scratch the gravel and the females lay
eggs.
He trapped mink and muskrat, too, and every morning before school, he
ran the trap lines, so any caught animals wouldnt suffer too long.
In those days before electricity, telephones, automobiles and
airplanes, even the skiing was different. Forget high-speed chair-lifts and
carbon-graphite equipment. Werry carved and bent his own planks, made bindings from cut-up
boots and skied down Broadford Hill straddling a curtain rod for a brake.
But it wasnt just the technology that was different. Werry
insists the people were different, too. His father, for example, who was Cornish, worked
his way across the Atlantic by age 15, then lived in Nevada, where he earned his living
blowing up trees with dynamite to make firewood.
"Can you imagine a 15-year-old doing that today?" he asked.
And the women outlived the men, usually. Werrys mother, who was
Welsh, had four sisters who were all widowed at least once. His own father only lived
until he was 69, Werry said, though his uncle lived until 98 and his aunt lived until 96.
Probably, he said, men died sooner because of the "strain of
life."
Like many men in those days, he worked in the mines, first in Butte,
Mont., then in Coeur dAlene. He was working at the Triumph mine just south of
Ketchum, only his fifth year as a miner, when a local doctor diagnosed him with silicosis.
Ironically, the disease, which he said he still carries in his lungs, might have saved his
life. He never worked in a mine again.
What he really wanted to be was a mining engineer and he enrolled at
the University of Idaho to study the subject. But at age 19, he, along with the entire
male student body, was conscripted by the U.S. Army during World War I. The army turned
the fraternity houses into barracks, sounded reverie every morning, and drilled students
on campus before class.
The war ended before Werry was shipped overseas, but finishing college
in those days wasnt easy.
"It wasnt like today," Werry said, "where you can
go to the government for your education. I ran out of money."
The next time he ran out of money he was married to Madeline Vines and
had two young sons, Arthur and Elwood. The Depression hit and he moved his family to
Indiana, where he worked as an inspector in the Chrysler/Dodge factory.
After two years of factory dust, however, his asthma got so bad he quit
and moved back to Idaho to work for the Highway Department.
During World War II, Werry engineered military airports in Oregon for
the Civil Aeronautics Authority.
Then he worked for the Idaho Department of Soil Conservation.
Elwood Werry has worn a lot of hats, but the two jobs of which he is
obviously the proudest were both indispensable to the city of Shoshone.
In 1950, Werry was appointed by President Harry Truman to be the
towns postmaster.
"In those days," he said, "you had to be approved by
congress. If you were a Democrat, you were approved by a Democratic congress," and
vice versa.
He held the job from 1950 until 1970, when a federal law forced him to
retire at age 70.
That was a disappointment to Werry, who said he was still "in
pretty good shape" then. But it was lucky for Shoshone, and ultimately lucky for
Werry.
The local government had been trying for years to get a sewer system
installed in the city, Werry said, and some of the locals thought he was just the man for
the job. He ran for mayor and won.
Werry was successful at getting the sewer system in, of which he says
hes very proud.
"Another thing Im very proud of," he said, "is
getting these railroad crossings in."
"Of course we had to kill three people before we did it," he
said, referring to three high school students whose car was mangled crossing the tracks
after a football game victory.
"We had everything piled up on the tracks and the Union Pacific
wouldnt [put the railroad crossings in]," he said, so the city did it,
"and we havent had an accident since."
Werry said he doesnt have a favorite decade in the 20th century
because they all have their good points. But, he said, "I think the most outstanding
thing thats happening now is communication."
Werry said he cant believe the difference between the era in
which he was born, when it "took days to get news from the coast," and now, when
"in the blink of an eye, you can talk to anybody in the world."
He said that he has no interest in using the Internet, but that he can
appreciate what it does. He compared it to the first time he listened to a radio with a
crowd of people in the Sun Valley Opera House. "It was just something out of this
world," he said, to see the glowing needle and hear voices plucked out of the air.
"Now, if some of those people could come back and see whats
happened in the last 50 years," he said. Then, he reconsiders. "Well, they
dont have to come back. Its me."
Werry said he doesnt have any current plans to celebrate the
millennium on New Years Eve. But, he added, "Id like to see the new
century. Ill be able to see three centuries then."