Life for Edith is still sweet
Long-time Town resident nears 100, credits perseverance, positive attitude
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Now an Autumn Care Assisted Living resident, Edith will celebrate her 100th birthday with family and friends Friday, July 14. - Photos submitted
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Edith Muldrew, seated center, of Farragut joined her husband, the late Elwood “Bill” Muldrew, left, and children, Judy Muldrew Fish and Don Muldrew, in her younger days. - Photos submitted
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Edith as a child with her pet dog. - Photos submitted
Coming upon a milestone, her 100th birthday, long-time Farragut resident Edith Lorrane Muldrew is surprised she made it.
“I don’t knew why I’m still here, but I am,” said the current resident of Autumn Care Senior Living along Herron Road. “I didn’t expect to live this long.”
Edith will celebrate her birthday Friday, July 14, with a party in her honor at Autumn Care.
She attributes her longevity to her upbringing on a farm in northern West Virginia.
“I think all the fresh fruits, vegetables and meats played a part in it,” Edith mused.
To all those longing for that milestone, she advised, “Just have a good attitude and a Christian life. Don’t let anything get you down.”
Edith’s son, Don Muldrew, an Oak Ridge resident, testified to his mother’s perseverance despite life’s obstacles.
“It’s amazing. She’s just independent as all get-out,” he said. “She just persevered.”
His mother struggled with heart problems and high blood pressure, but she outlived her husband, Elwood “Bill” Muldrew, who died in 2008.
“He always seemed to be healthier, but he had a heart attack and just went downhill then,” Don recalled about his father.
Edith was born in 1923 in northern West Virginia to Edna and George Miller, the youngest of six children.
“(The siblings are) all deceased now, along with their spouses,” she said.
During the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were no televisions and rarely automobiles.
However, the Depression “didn’t affect us because we had our own meat and vegetables,” Edith said.
In the 1930s, she started school when she was 5.
“We went to a two-room schoolhouse in the country,” Edith said. “The school teacher stayed with us (on their farm). We didn’t have transportation in the late ’30s.”
When Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, Edith remembered being afraid her two brothers would be drafted, but they were spared.
Edith was 16 when she graduated high school and 17 when she started attending West Virginia University, majoring in home economics.
Instead of finishing college, she met her future husband, Bill, also a WVU student, through a friend’s introduction.
“I went (to the university) for two years and then I got married,” Edith said. “He thought he was going to be drafted, so we got married (in 1942).”
Bill, in fact, was drafted and served in the U.S. Navy, but he didn’t have to go overseas because “they lost his clothes” while he was being shipped from the East Coast to the West Coast, she recalled with a chuckle.
So, “thank goodness that kept him in the States,” Edith said.
After returning home, Bill worked for Union Carbide in Baltimore, where he moved his family. At the time he did not have a car and had to buy one to work.
Bill and Edith also had a daughter, Judy Muldrew Fish of Ohio.
“Oh, she was a wonderful mother, doing things for me and my sister, being involved, helping us out,” said Don, who graduated from Farragut High School in 1963 (his sister graduated in 1961). “She would teach us to work, make sure we got our homework, make sure we had clothes.
“She made my clothes most of the time when I was growing up because I was so tall and skinny I couldn’t find anything to fit,” he added. “She made all my sister’s prom dresses and all that kind of stuff. She was a very good seamstress.”
Edith has six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren – one of whom has passed away — and she is expecting her first great-great grandchild in August.
In 1952, the Mudrews lived in Pittsburgh, where Bill was working for a utility company, and decided to get away from the freezing temperatures and move to the South.
“He saw an ad that people were needed to work in Oak Ridge,” Edith said.
After living in a hot apartment in Oak Ridge, they moved again, this time to Farragut, where they built a house along Sonja Drive.
After her children went to college, Don said Edith went to work for Jack Bevins in a Farragut drug store, then at another drug store in the West End Center area owned by W.C. Franz.
Don said his mother always was fiercely independent, but at 94 years old, she told him, “‘I don’t think I can do for myself”” and moved into Autumn Care.
