Anna Mae Houtz

HOUTZ, FRY, ATHERTON

Posted By: June Brewer Welsch (email)
Date: 1/17/2008 at 09:34:33

From Muscatine Iowa Journal Monday Jan. 15, 2007 page 3a
Wapello woman celebrates 100 years
WAPELLO, Iowa, Memories of the Roaring ’20s and the Great Depression have faded for Anna Mae Houtz. However, she knows what’s important her children, Robert, Vernon, LaMoine and Janice, their spouses, children and grandchildren.

We are so blessed to have her, said granddaughter Diana Houtz Mann of Willits, Calif., daughter of Robert Houtz.

Anna Mae Fry Houtz was born in Allen, Neb., in 1907. More than 40 friends and relatives sang happy birthday to her Sunday, Jan. 14, on her 100th birthday.

Anna Mae’s journey to Louisa County began more than 100 years ago when her parents, Thomas and Luella Fry, were heading west in a covered wagon looking for good farm ground and stopped in Nebraska. Later, with their eight children, they returned to Iowa where they thought they could make a better living. They lived in the Cranston area, then New Era, both in Muscatine County, then moved to Port Louisa Township in Louisa County, where they remained and raised their family.

Anna Mae was on the girls basketball team at Grandview High School, where she graduated in 1924. She drove a school bus while still in school and kept it at home at night.

Her oldest son, Robert Houtz, who has lived in California since about 1950, says he is still amazed that a teenager like her would be given so much responsibility to take care of the bus and drive it filled with children on country roads that, in those days, were dirt and often muddy.

Shortly after graduation, she married David Houtz, who had worked for her father. The couple spent the next 20-some years raising their family, at first in Burlington, where her husband worked for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (CB&Q) Railroad. About 1948, the family moved to Wapello, where David Houtz owned an auto repair shop. He died in 1966.

In the late 1950s, after her children were grown, Anna Mae worked as a cook at the Wapello school for at least 20 years, then became the first cook at the congregate meal site. She later cooked at the Wapello Nursing & Rehab Center, where she now resides, for about five years. Several summers were spent taking food training classes at Iowa State College in Ames.

The entire family says she’s a great cook and loves to bake.

She used to serve me pie for breakfast when we visited, or she would serve real cream with Grape Nuts. I loved it, remembers Mann. Then we would go to school for lunch, and I was so proud that Grandma had made that meal.

Anna Mae crocheted, made quilts, knitted and made plastic canvas art.

Mann, who is a school librarian in California, has a Christmas tree in her library every year decorated with Anna Mae’s handmade ornaments.

All the kids know about Grandma by her ornaments, Mann said.

Mann’s daughter, Anna Mae’s great-granddaughter, Jennifer Mann Gomez of California, says she always looks forward to visiting Anna Mae and playing card games.

She remembers every move, "Jennifer said". You don’t dare cross her at cards.

Anna Mae wouldn’t venture a guess on why she has beaten the odds and lived for a century. She has always been in good health except for suffering extreme pain in her neck and back after an accident about 1930. With chiropractic treatments, that eventually improved.

Anna Mae has attended every Grandview alumni reunion except in 2004 when she was ill. She is looking forward to the 2007 gathering.