Still a competitor, even at 100
Lea Shanks visits with Marie Trodick at Trodick's 100th birthday party at the North Valley Senior Center. (Chris Peterson/Hungry Horse News)
From left, the Trodick/Rogers/Kavanagh family at Marie's 100th birthday party. Sam Kavanagh, Nolan Kavanagh, Sara (Trodick) Kavanagh, Marie Trodick, Roxy (Trodick) Rogers and Jack Rogers.
Even at 100, Marie Trodick still loves to play cards.
“You bet, I love to win,” she said with a big grin.
Family and friends gathered for her birthday party on a snowy Saturday at the North Valley Senior Center, a place where Trodick won many, many hands of cards over the years.
When asked how it feels to be 100, she said, “The same as yesterday.”
Trodick, whose maiden name is Jensen, grew up on the family farm outside of Circle, Montana, the only girl in a family of four boys.
The family raised Hereford cows. The ranch is still in the family today and her brother Earl lives there. He’s 101.
After high school she graduated from Montana State with a nursing degree in 1946. Marie and her husband, Robert A. Trodick, moved to Columbia Falls in 1952 so he could work at the Anaconda Aluminum Co. plant, which was under construction at the time.
The two met in Great Falls and were married Sept. 17, 1946. He had just recently returned from World War II.
The couple had two children, Roxanne “Roxy” (Trodick) Rogers and Robert E. Trodick. Robert Sr. died of cancer in 2000.
Marie was a practicing nurse in Columbia Falls, working at the Whitefish Hospital and the county nursing home in Kalispell. Trodick administered some of the first polio vaccines in Columbia Falls in the 1950s as a “volunteer nurse.” The nurses were critical in administering the new vaccine against polio, which is a crippling disease that strikes primarily young people.
Trodick also owned a stake in a family oil well.
She was also D.C. Dunham’s home nurse during his final time on Earth. Dunham was the founder of Plum Creek Timber Co.
In addition to her children, Trodick has five grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. She lives with the family in Columbia Falls and still gets out to play cards and dominoes with friends and family.
More than 100 people came to wish her happy birthday. When asked what her secret was to longevity, Trodick said to “live a clean life, have lots of friends and lots of laughter.”
From left, the Trodick/Rogers/Kavanagh family at Marie's 100th birthday party. Sam Kavanagh, Nolan Kavanagh, Sara (Trodick) Kavanagh, Marie Trodick, Roxy (Trodick) Rogers and Jack Rogers.