Polson centenarian celebrates birthday
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POLSON — If Helen Steuerwald could swing to Big Band music on her birthday, she would. Yet at 100 years old, she still had enough wind to blow out the candles on her chocolate birthday cake.
“She loved to dance,” daughter Janis Jette said, recalling her mother’s younger years. “She was a big-time dancer, and she loves music.”
Helen spent the day before her birthday getting her hair cut and styled, and indulged in a manicure and pedicure to be “spiffed up” for her Feb. 7 birthday, which she spent at a luncheon with friends and family.
She was born in Charlo, the oldest of seven Borgstede children. She helped her father on the farm but found time to play basketball on the Charlo High School girls’ team.
Helen and her sister had just two dresses apiece. They would wash one and wear the other, and then repeat the process so they always had clean clothes.
“I just wore ordinary old farmer stuff,” Helen said.
Helen met her husband Winston “Curly” Steuerwald in Missoula at a boarding house. Curley came to Montana with the Civilian Conservation Corps. They went dancing on their first date and kept dancing for 59 years after they married on Nov. 5, 1938.
“I was 19 when I got married,” Helen said.
Helen and Curly had two children, Janis and Gary.
Grandson Mark Jette worked with his grandmother in her garden when she lived in Victor. His job was picking peas, and he always got in trouble for eating more peas than he put in the basket.
Now Helen lives at The Retreat, an assisted living community in Polson.
But, she said, “I’d still like to be dancing.”
