Daily Sitka Sentinel

Centenarian Celebrates with Daisies, Kin

By Sentinel Staff

Cora Mosher celebrated her 100th birthday today with a smile, lots of family surrounding her, and 100 daisies.

Curtis Webb gives his grandmother, Cora Mosher, 100 daisies today. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

The flowers were a present from one of her grandsons, Curtis Webb, who was carrying on a tradition started when the Mosher family was living in Ketchikan and had wild daisies in the yard. Curtis gave them to her once on her birthday and has been giving them to her ever since.

Other parts of the celebration today were a breakfast with 100 candles on the waffles, and a late lunch for dinner. On Saturday the family will gather at Centennial Hall for a birthday lunch and more visiting among the family.

All the immediate family except for one grandchild, Jolene Mosher, are here. Most of them live in Sitka: Cora’s daughter Janice Webb; Janice’s son Trevor, his wife Barbara and children Madison, Shane and Zachary; the family of Janice’s late son Michael Lee Webb, his widow Jocelyn and their children Justine and Hayden; and Cora’s son Ron, his wife Bitsy and their children Amelia and Nicholas. Janice’s son Curtis, his wife Lynn and children Nicole and Austin are here from their home in Folsom, California.

Janice Webb said that for a while her mother was saying she didn’t want a birthday party.

That may have been because years ago, Cora’s mother, Amalie Ludwigsen, was preparing for her own 100th birthday, with relatives coming from as far away as Germany, when, four days before the celebration, “Gammie” died.

Adding to Cora’s reluctance for a party was a fall she took a couple of weeks ago which left her bruised and not able to walk easily.

That’s been really hard on her, Janice said.

“She walks to the downtown post office all the time,” Janice said. “She’s always walked a lot, her whole life.”

Although she lives in an apartment over Harry Race, the stairs there don’t bother her, Janice said.

Cora was born in Astoria, Oregon, one of eight children of Amalie and Nels, Ludwigsen. The family moved to Seattle, where Cora graduated from Queen Anne High School intending to become a teacher. But her dad, a boatbuilder, moved the family to Ketchikan, and it was there she met Floyd Mosher, who had arrived in 1938 from Michigan. After they married, he became a machinist for Alaska Airlines and then worked at the Ketchikan pulp mill. Cora meanwhile, worked at Tongass Trading Co., and at the post office.

Ten years ago, the Moshers moved to Sitka, where Floyd entered the Pioneers Home and Cora moved into the Harry Race apartment.

Floyd died in August 2009 at age 93.

Her hearing has gotten bad, to her annoyance, but her mother still enjoys visiting with people she meets on her walks, Janice said. She feeds ravens (just ravens) by the bridge (“they know me,” Cora says), and likes being around the Mt. Edgecumbe High School students, who are so polite.

On her walks she is not hampered by Sitka’s variable weather and when it rains she tells her daughter, “it’s just water.”

As for the many birthdays she has celebrated so far, she says she has no favorites.

“I’ve enjoyed them all,” she said.