Three 101-year-old friends recall fond memories in 1940s Alexandria

The young women in the black-and-white photos look cheerful, carefree and ready for whatever adventures and happily-ever-afters might lie ahead. They're neatly dressed in the styles fashionable in years just before World War II: crisp white blouses, dark-red lipstick, elaborately coiffed hair.

There seems little chance the women in the photos could have imagined a future where they'd be looking at these fresh faces 80 years later, on a hot July day over lunch in a Burnsville restaurant.

But there they were, all three now 101 years old: Virginia Goering of New Hope, Vera Sims of Waterville and her twin sister, Viva Froemming of Isanti, long-ago graduates of Alexandria High School (classes of '40 and '41).

They became friends and stayed in touch over the decades, their get-togethers and bridge games ebbing and flowing around marriages, babies and aging.

"Look how we had our hair curled," Virginia said.

"You look more like your mother every day," Vera told Virginia, glancing up from one photo.

Of course they couldn't have foreseen it. Mainly because in 1950, the first year for which there are even reliable estimates, there were only about 2,300 centenarians in the whole United States. Thanks to medical advances at both ends of the life cycle, average life expectancy (at birth) expanded by three decades during the 20th century to the current 77.5 years.

Nowadays the odds of living a century are about 10 times higher, and though estimates vary there are more than 100,000 centenarians in the country. Virginia's husband was one of them, in fact, until he died last year at 102. The centenarian population is expected to more than quadruple over the next 30 years.

As for the chances of three friends from the same small town all living more than a century while staying in touch, well, you'd have to ask a really good mathematician.

"Vera, did you used to go with him?" Virginia asked, pointing to a photo.

The friends sat at one end of a long table in a bar and grill near Burnsville Mall, as family members — four daughters, one granddaughter and a sister-in-law — filled the rest of the table, chatting about families, weddings, siblings, hometowns.

The restaurant, whose interior signaled its gravitas with brick and dark wood and a wall full of wine bottles, was the kind of place people might gather to celebrate something. The kind of place that, when these friends were young, wouldn't have existed in Burnsville, which at the time was unincorporated farmland.

They ate slices of a what is now considered Americans' favorite food but that, back when they were in high school, few Minnesotans had ever even heard of — pizza.­­

The three now live in assisted living centers or with relatives. One has hearing and eyesight problems. One has memory issues. One spends winters in Arizona, where she lives on her own.

"Do you still play bridge?" someone asked Vera.

"You bet — three times a week," Vera said.

Together, the friends flipped through the heavy leather-bound photo album, its pages filled with snapshots held in photo corners. A fourth close friend, Charlotte, died about 20 years ago. And, of course, most, or perhaps all, of the other people in the photographs are long gone, too.

Virginia and Vera tried to remember the names of a few. Viva looked on, smiling but mostly quiet.

"Oh, there's Wally!" Virginia said. "Right? That's Wally."

"That's Squints and me," Vera said of a different photo.

Everybody had a nickname back then, she said. One young man was called "Dopey," like one of the seven dwarves. Disney's animated "Snow White" came out a few years before they left high school.

They reminisced about old boyfriends and proms, about trips to a lake cabin, about how their husbands all went to fight in World War II.

Their waitress came by, refilling coffee cups. "I like that you're doing this," she said. "It's so cool."

"When you get to be 101, you've got to do something," Virginia replied.

So what did they used to do for fun, back in the day?

"Oh, we went to all the football games, baseball games..." Vera said. Her voice trailed off.

She paused for a moment, remembering the good times 80 years ago.

"And we danced," she said. "Oh, we danced."