Turning a century

Moses Lake resident recaps life on Oklahoma frontier and events that changed U.S.

and world history

MOSES LAKE — The thought of turning 100 means just another day of living for Moses Lake resident Zealan Murray.

"I just go on the same," Murray said. "I think I'm a little more active than most 100-year-olds are."

It was Oct. 24, 1905 when Murray was born in Oklahoma.

The fourth of eight children, Murray's parents were farmers who taught their children that tending to farm work and getting a good education were of equal importance.

"We worked, but we went to school," Murray said.

For a family that would grow to 10 in number, what income farming could provide was not always adequate to feed the family, especially when droughts and the Great Depression left families with little or no income to survive on.

No rain for days at a time left crops unharvestable and spreading fertilizer on fields to hold the crops down did not do much to save harvests for Murray's family or others.

Cotton bails stacked in Murray's front yard in Oklahoma went unsold. By the time the stock market crash of 1929 took place, Murray had moved to eastern Montana. Even with many unemployed, the work of the farmer continued, as Murray recalls.

"They couldn't lay down and sleep so they had to keep trying," Murray said. "We were poor, but we didn't know we were poor because everybody else was in the same boat."

When Murray was not tending to farm work or school, she participated in organizing school plays, joined the high school basketball team and played harmless pranks.

"I think those were my most enjoyable days," Murray said of her time in high school.

Before mass communications, being isolated at times from the news of national and world events, Murray felt she didn't always understand the seriousness of war and poverty.

"War," she said, "that just meant fighting and death. I don't think we took the (idea of) war as seriously as we do now."

During World War II, Murray taught school in McCabe, Mont., and when she wasn't doing that she took up the job of full-time farm wife.

"That was the good life," Murray said.

Still, life outside the farm continued to change with increased communications such as the telephone, radio and eventually the Internet.

Remembering walking down a dirt road one day, the sound of two cars was enough to send then 7-year-old Murray running from the roar of the engine.

And the first telephone Murray's family had, she remembers as more of a nuisance than a luxury.

There was one line with eight or 10 people talking at once and everybody listening in on one another's conversations, she said.

As for the Internet, it is not something Murray has a desire to learn how to use as using her typing skills has never been one of her strengths.

In 1973, she and her husband moved to Moses Lake to retire.

Murray's oldest of two daughters, Pat Scherting, doesn't find it surprising that her mother is nearing the 100-year-mark.

"She has those long genes in her family," Scherting said. "She has more aches and pains, but who doesn't?"

An open house for friends and family of Murray's will be held Oct. 23 from noon to 2:30 p.m. at the United Methodist Church in Moses Lake at 746 South Ironwood.