MEDFORD, Ore. — The only numbers that concern Central Point resident Virginia Batzer are the ones on the cards — or the folding money — when she’s playing bridge.
Batzer, who turned 105 on Sept. 24, is far less impressed with age than she is with the welfare of her cat, Jet, and finding suitable participants for her weekly bridge games.
To celebrate her 105th year, Batzer was treated to lots of family time, a homemade lemon pie and bridge for her birthday weekend.
Stepdaughter Mary Jo Baich said Batzer gets around — and keeps up with life — better than a lot of folks half her age. Indifferent to “so much fuss,” the centenarian just rolls her eyes and calls for her cat. The cat wanders the assisted-living facility at Twin Creeks, not one for being slowed down or fussed with, much like his owner.
A native of Valentine, Neb., Batzer was born Sept. 24, 1917. She grew up doing “the usual things,” playing in the street, riding horses and enjoying the occasional tent show that rolled into town. She remembers the novelty of her hometown’s moniker, affirmed by people sending mail to be stamped “from Valentine” each year on Feb. 14.
Raised by a woman who ran a boarding house, Batzer said the woman’s sister lived across the street with 13 kids.
“Two or three of them were my age, so I had lots of playmates growing up,” she recalled.
Moving to Oregon in her 20s, Batzer was married to Ernest “Ernie” Flakus. The couple had one child and adopted two more. She worked over the years as a lab technician and even as a crane operator during World War II for the shipyards near Vancouver.
“I don’t remember how I ended up running the crane, but it was an interesting job. I needed a job, and it was a job. The only thing that bothered me was climbing the ladder to get up into the crane,” she said.
“I remember I met one girl who I got to know really well, and she climbed into her crane and fell to the ground. It was quite a long ways down, and she was killed. It was a really sad thing. I was probably in my 40s then, so quite a few years ago.”
After her first husband passed, Batzer eventually married Jack Batzer, the founder in 1955 of Batzer Construction. Jack Batzer’s first wife was killed in 1982 by a hitchhiker, and Jack Batzer was seriously wounded in the attack.
Virginia, whose children grew up with her late husband’s children, recalled wondering when he would remarry.
“Jack was single for about 13 years after his first wife was murdered. We used to walk in behind him at church, and I remember I would always wonder about him and why he never got remarried,” she said.
“Little did I know, I was going to be the one.”
In their 80s when they both wed for the second time, Jack and Virginia, who shared a combined 10 children, traveled and played lots and lots of cards, Baich noted. Jack Batzer died 17 years ago, in 2005.
Baich teased that her stepmother’s seriousness about cards has yet to wane in the slightest, despite first getting her hands on a set of cards at the age of “5 or 6 years old.”
“Virginia won’t play unless there’s money on the table,” Baich said. “And she teaches all the grandchildren to play as soon as they’re old enough to hold a stack of cards.”
A testament to her competitive streak, Batzer holds the distinction at Twin Creeks Retirement as being the only senior to have ever achieved a grand slam on the facility’s Nintendo Wii.
