When she was born, President William Howard Taft was in the White House. As a child, she rode in a covered wagon, but in her 90s, she talked on a cellular telephone. Katharine Torrence’s life spanned more than a century of time and light-years of advances.
But, through it all, one thing never changed.
“The most important thing in her life was her family,” said her son, the Rev. Bruce Torrence, 67, of Festus. “She would like to be remembered as someone who took care of her family.”
Mrs. Torrence died Dec. 29, just a few weeks shy of her 102nd birthday.
“She cut her own grass well into her 80s; wouldn’t hear of anyone else doing it,” her son said. “She drove until she was right around 90; she lived by herself until she was 100.
“She was very independent and strong-willed. You didn’t tell Mom she couldn’t do something.”
Mrs. Torrence was born in Independence, one of eight children in a family whose wanderlust would take them all over the United States and Canada in a horse-drawn wagon filled with possessions, and which made stops in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas as well as Canada.
“In Oklahoma, they lived next to an Indian reservation, and she always had stories about the Indians, how good neighbors they were,” Bruce said. “She told about going skating on frozen ponds, and about being chased by a wolf.”
The family came to this area in the early 1920s, and young Katharine met her future husband, Wilbern Torrence, when he came around to visit her brother. They were married in 1931, and settled in Herculaneum to raise six children.
“Growing up the way she did, then going through the Depression, then rationing during the war – she was very frugal and very enterprising,” Bruce said of his mother.
The Torrences kept cattle, and they had a fruit orchard and a milk cow.
“We kids did the cranking and churning,” Bruce said with a laugh. “They kept a garden bigger than most city lots are now.”
His sister, Donna Longley, 71, of Festus, helped their mother preserve the crops from that garden.
“I don’t know how she did it, standing over that hot stove for hours in the summer heat, with no air conditioning,” she said.
Donna also recalls her mother doing laundry the old-fashioned way.
“She heated water on the stove in a big tub and had to use the wringer,” she said. “That meant she had to rinse every piece and wring it and hang it on the line. Then it all had to be ironed.
“Mom reminded me a lot of Granny on ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ because she always wore a print dress and had an apron on. We had a lot of problems with groundhogs, and she’d get her shotgun and go out after them. She’d never miss.”
Mrs. Torrence was a good cook, her daughter said.
“She’d spend all day Saturday baking pies for Sunday dinner,” Donna said. “On Sunday mornings, we kids went to Sunday school and mom would go out and kill a chicken and we’d have chicken and dumplings for dinner.”
Mrs. Torrence was not a big person, but she lived large.
“She never weighed 100 pounds, and she was barely 5 feet tall,” Bruce said. “But she’d tackle anything. Whatever needed to be done she got out and did it.”
His sister agreed.
“She helped our Dad build three houses. She laid flooring, she did drywall. She could do about anything,” Donna said. “They both were self-taught. She could look at something and see what was needed, how to do it.”
“There wasn’t anything lazy about either of them, and they wouldn’t let us be lazy,” Bruce said of his parents. “They taught us the value of work. But we had a good time. We had horses, we had our bikes. We went swimming and all the other things kids do.”
When her husband died, Mrs. Torrence was 59. She still had one child at home and needed help making ends meet. So she took a job at the cafeteria at Herculaneum High School.
“She worked just a couple of hours each day, in the serving line,” Bruce said. “She also worked at a laundromat in Herky, cleaning machines, making change for people. She retired from the school when she was 65.”
Mrs. Torrence was a member of First Baptist Church of Herculaneum/Pevely and enjoyed sewing and crafting.
“She made these chicken potholders that were really cute,” Donna said. “People still ask me if I have the pattern. I don’t think she had a pattern; I think my mother just figured it out.”
She also was an avid reader.
“She read almost continually,” Bruce said. “Then, in recent years, her eyes got so bad she couldn’t read, couldn’t really even see the TV. It was kind of a miserable life to have.”
Although she did have some heart issues, having a pacemaker installed several years ago, it was simply time that caught up with Mrs. Torrence.
“She basically wore out,” her son said. “She worked hard for those 102 years; and she earned a rest.”
“She was a pretty special person,” Donna said. “She didn’t have an easy life, but she had a great life.”
“Life Story,” posted each Saturday on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.