Stingl: A well-lived life of 99 years and 364 days ends one day short of this woman's 100th birthday goal

From what I read, just one of every 6,000 Americans makes it to age 100.

Betty Trimberger Smith came achingly close to this elusive milestone. She wound up one day short. After 36,524 days of life, including 25 leap days, Betty needed only one more to reach 100.

It was not to be. The Hubertus woman was born March 15, 1918, and died last week on March 14, 2018. 

"She kept saying to people, 'I'm going to be 100 in March.' Just 23 more hours and she would have made it," Betty's daughter, Cherlyn Frenchmore, told me.

I called Cherlyn after spotting Betty's death notice, which mentioned how close she came to 100. It's like running a marathon and passing out three feet from the finish line. But death allows no do-overs.

"The plan was that we were going to invite people to stop at the house on her birthday. But we could tell she wasn't doing well, so it was day-to-day," Cherlyn said.

Betty took a fall in October, broke seven ribs and had developed blood clots and other health problems since then. She spent time in the hospital and in rehab and the final three weeks in home hospice. But until nearly the end, she was lucid and talking.

It looked likely she would become a centenarian. Her hospice workers scheduled a party for her on Wednesday, her last day of being 99, but Betty died shortly after midnight that day. She took a few final shallow breaths and was gone.

Cherlyn, who lives in Colorado Springs with her husband, Frank, filled in details of her wonderful mother's long life. She was born Elizabeth Signer to her Hungarian immigrant parents, John and Margaret Signer, who settled in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and then moved to Milwaukee.

Margaret spoke no English. Her Parkinson's disease was thought to be mental illness, and she was put in a sanitarium while still in her 30s. Betty and her siblings were placed in an orphanage and later were reunited with their father and his housekeeper, who was abusive to the children.

Betty never finished high school. She met her first husband, Clement Smith, at a dance hall and they married in the early 1940s. They lived in Butler with their two children, Cherlyn and her older brother, Kenneth. Betty took a job in the hot lunch program of the local Catholic school. 

Cherlyn said her mother had a huge garden at home and canned many vegetables. She loved flowers, especially gladiolas. She sewed Cherlyn's clothes and even those worn by the girl's doll, using scraps of her own worn-out outfits. Neighborhood kids stopped over often for her huge homemade cookies.

Clement Smith died of cancer in 1971, about the time the family moved to a resort on Bark Lake in Hubertus. Archie Cox, a widower who liked stopping there to play pool, got acquainted with Betty and they married.

After he died, Betty married a third time to Jim Trimberger, a widower recommended by her dentist. Trimberger died in 1994. Several years later, Betty and her son Kenneth, who never married, moved in together at a horse ranch in Hubertus where she would live out her life. Many of the horses were used by law enforcement agencies.

Betty never smoked and seldom drank. She walked for exercise and favored home-cooked natural foods, though admitted a weakness for sweets and KFC chicken. She took driving lessons in her 80s but decided it wasn't for her. She survived breast cancer and lymphoma, and outlived her four siblings and their spouses.

"She was amazed that she was going to be 100, that she would live that long," Cherlyn said.

Betty made it, except for one darn day. I say we round up and call it an even century.

Contact Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or jstingl@jrn.com. Connect with my public page at Facebook.com/Journalist.Jim.Stingl