Bigfork woman celebrates 100th birthday on Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving marks more than the beginning of another holiday season for Anne Louise Dibble, who plans to celebrate her 100th birthday along with at least 30 of her descendants on the nation’s day of gratitude.

Born Nov. 23, 1917, Dibble grew up in Naches, Washington on her family’s dairy farm, helping her mother can fruit and aiding in the daily operations alongside her seven siblings.

Number seven out of eight children, Dibble was brought up in a stern yet loving environment that, she said, was nothing like the way children are raised today.

Though many of the details from her younger years have faded, she can still recall some of the stories she has told her children as a way to illustrate the past. The star of most of those stories is her father, who worked long hours milking cows, tending hay fields and raising his children the best way he knew how.

“He was funny and would play with us girls,” Dibble said.

One of Dibble’s favorite memories of her father on their farm occurred when one of their dairy cows broke into a fence that guarded stacks of alfalfa.

After the cow had eaten her fill, Dibble’s father found her bloated and in pain.

“Dad yelled to the house, ‘bring me a knife! The cow ate too much and she’s bloated full,’” Dibble said.

When she and her siblings brought the knife, Dibble said her father knew right where to stick it to release the gas that filled the cow’s stomach.

“She was OK after that,” Dibble said.

Her family also raised pigs, she recalled, including one “ornery boar.”

“Dad always carried a club to feed that one because he knew he could really attack him,” she said.

One day, she heard the familiar sound of her father’s voice calling from the field, “Bring me a knife!” this time followed by “I just killed this pig.”

The feeding had not gone smoothly that day, bringing Dibble’s father to strike the angry boar on the head, killing it.

“We had fresh pork that night,” Dibble said, laughing.

The funny protagonist of those anecdotes also showed a softer side, Dibble said.

He cared deeply for his children, doting on them when they were sick and taking them along on hay sale and wood-collection trips in the family’s wagon.

Her mother, Dibble said, was sickly most of her life and suffered from a bad heart.

She often canned fruit in half-gallon jars in the family’s kitchen with the help of her eldest son and daughters, a feat that Dibble said now blows her mind.

Most of Dibble’s education came from the farm, she said, because her family lived 15 miles from the nearest high school and her father felt girls had no need for higher education.

She didn’t mind, she said, because as a child, she had no desire to go to school anyway.

One of her favorite pastimes was dancing.

In fact, she met both her first and second husband at a dance as a young adult. They would waltz and foxtrot while a band played the music of the time.

“Oh, I loved to dance,” she said.

She and her dance partner married and had three children together.

Dibble stayed home to raise her family until the marriage ended nine years later when her husband “walked off.”

She went back to a dance at the same place as before and met her second husband, Wilfred Dibble.

Through her second husband she came to know the Lord and had two more children, one of which was the daughter she had dreamed of after four boys.

Dibble worked for a while doing laundry for a nursing home, but devoted most of her life to being a mother.

One thing she said she loved about her role was cooking for her family, and she made everything from the traditional meat and potatoes to her children’s favorite cakes and pies.

Today, Dibble lives with her daughter, Donna Mudie, and her husband in Bigfork, which she said is her favorite place she has ever lived.

Mudie described her mother as a funny woman who cares deeply about her children. She had her boundaries, Mudie said, but wasn’t very strict.

“[She was] loving, would do anything for you, but still kick your butt if you needed it,” Mudie said.

Mudie was the only of Dibble’s five children who did not have children of her own, and she now devotes her time to taking care of the woman she described as her best friend.

The two share their love of arts and crafts.

The walls of their home display Dibble’s intricate crotchet pieces and a handcrafted doll house alongside Mudie’s many homemade ornaments and decorative mementos.

Toward the back of the house, a work-in-progress covers a table in handprints and fabric as Mudie works to finish a quilt of handprints from Dibble’s entire family, numbering nearly 50 in all.

In the weeks leading up to Dibble’s birthday, Mudie said she asked if there was anything her mother wanted to put on her bucket list. According to Dibble, there is little left that she wants to do other than see her family, though she said, “there must be something the Lord wants me to do that I haven’t done yet” for her to have lived so long.

This Thanksgiving, Dibble’s five children, 12 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and at least five great-great-grandchildren will gather together in celebration of the woman who started it all.

Reporter Mary Cloud Taylor can be reached at 758-4459 or mtaylor@dailyinterlake.com.