Shirley Otterman pictured at her home in Toledo on Tuesday, Oct. 15, where she has lived for nearly seven decades. Otterman celebrated her 100th birthday this past Wednesday, Oct. 23. She along with her late husband once owned and operated Wayne’s Market in downtown Toledo. PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

TOLEDO – After spending almost all of her adult life working – starting out at 17 as a rural country school teacher and only retiring from Toledo City Hall in her mid 80s – lifelong Toledo resident Shirley Otterman joins the much-revered centenarian club today, Wednesday, Oct. 23. And while she cannot pinpoint any single action she’s taken through the years to be afforded such a long, healthy life, she does believe staying busy and active certainly played a part.

“I always kept busy. I always belonged to something. And I have real good friends,” Otterman said on a recent Tuesday afternoon in October ahead of her milestone birthday. As she spoke to the newspaper, she was seated at her kitchen table in her tidy, white house on Broadway Street, the only house she’s lived in since she and her late husband Wayne Otterman moved to town off the farm nearly 70 years ago.

At 99, Otterman’s mind is still very sharp although her hearing is reduced and eyesight in one eye gives her some trouble. But she still enjoys reading – “Oh, I like that Danielle Steel,” – and visiting with her friends who remain. She talks on the phone to a couple of those friends several times a day and also goes out to eat or for a drive – she quit driving herself about seven years ago – at least once a week with her very good friend Mary Ann Gardner, 80, who was present during Otterman’s interview with the newspaper.

She also enjoys visits from family including her daughters Susan Kaley of Ankeny and Peggy Francomb of Elizabeth, Ill, as well as her six grandchildren and four great-great grandchildren but unfortunately none of them live nearby.

And despite retiring from City Hall over a decade ago where she answered the phones part-time, Otterman continues to stay as busy as she can.

PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

“She’s been a member of (Christ United) Methodist Church (in Toledo) her whole life,” Gardner said of her friend. “She does all their calling for donations for UMW [ United Methodist Women, now called United Women in Faith] and for funeral lunches.”

“They also mail me the sermon every week,” Otterman added.

“It’s not a lot, what she still does, but it keeps her mind busy,” Gardner said.

A working life

Otterman grew up on a farm north of Toledo along what is now US 63. She graduated from Toledo High School, earning her normal training certificate in the process. She spent several years teaching in rural country schools after graduation.

“My plans were to go along [after high school] to Cedar Falls [Iowa State Teachers College, now the University of Northern Iowa]. But I graduated during war (World War II) and then my mother got sick and she needed help so I stayed home and helped her. I taught on my normal training certificate for five years.”

Otterman said she taught in some “terrible, rundown” country schools for two years before transferring to a country school in Crystal Township. When her parents moved to Toledo off the farm, she went with them and began working for Central Iowa Grain which at the time was operating five elevators in and around Toledo.

“I spent five years there as the bookkeeper,” Otterman said before pausing and chuckling. “Then Wayne came into the picture.”

Otterman married her husband Wayne Otterman at the age of 28. They lived on the Otterman family farm for a few years before eventually moving with their two young daughters to Toledo, buying a little fixer-upper on Broadway Street where Otterman lives to this day.

“It was ready to fall down,” Otterman explained of the house. “But Wayne was quite the carpenter and did a lot of the work himself. I’ve never wanted to move (from the house).”

In 1988, Wayne passed away at the age of 74, leaving Otterman a widow for the last 36 years.

When the couple first moved to Broadway Street, Otterman said she sold Avon and had a fairly thriving little side hustle – “I did that for years.”

Through the decades she additionally held various bookkeeping positions including at Sunny Hill Care Center in Tama for eight years. She also worked as a cashier at Pamida (before that Gibson’s) and at two downtown Toledo dress shops before ending her career at Toledo City Hall where she assisted the city clerk.

But what most people of a certain age in Toledo probably remember best about Otterman and her husband is their grocery store on East High Street (located in the corner of what has previously been known as the Horbach Buildings).

The building the Ottermans purchased in 1968 (per the Tama County Assessor’s Office) had once been a soda shop before Lowell Applegate began operating it as a grocery known as Lowell’s Market which the Ottermans renamed Wayne’s Market.

“The first thing Wayne did was lower the prices of laundry detergent and coffee,” Otterman recalled of her husband who worked the meat counter while she ran the register. “We had a really good business. We owned [the store] for a decade. It was a small store but we had a really good meat market in there. Wayne cut all the meat himself. We had people coming from Des Moines, the meat was so good.”

At one time, Otterman said Toledo had at least five grocery stores in operation. Today there are none.

When asked which of her many jobs or careers she enjoyed the most, Otterman thought for a moment before simply replying, “I just liked all of them.”

A century of living

When asked how she feels about turning 100, Otterman said her friends “are thinking more about it than I am.”

“I’m glad that I can still take care of myself,” she added, “but the days get awfully long.”

Even at 99, Otterman hardly ever has to go to the doctor, Gardner said, to which Otterman interjected, “Except when I didn’t eat right or drink enough. Sometimes I don’t do a very good job.”

Several years back while delivering flyers for the church’s annual pancake breakfast in and around Tama, Otterman tripped on a curb and ended up in the hospital and then the care center for recovery but that’s been about the most severe health issue she’s dealt with in her later years.

In terms of a birthday present this year, Otterman said “there’s not really anything” she wants or needs, but – in an echo of previous comments – she admitted she would like to alleviate her loneliness.

“I sometimes feel lonely. The days just get awful long.”

Thankfully she has a few good friends around including Gardner and also a friend named Colleen who is in her mid-80s and to whom she chats on the phone at least two to three times a day. There’s also a set of young sisters who stop by with their grandma sometimes to bring Otterman ice cream.

“Oh they bring me strawberry sundaes,” she said – with a twinkle in her eye and lick of her lips – when asked what kind of ice cream she likes. Gardner said Otterman’s favorite food is waffles with whipped cream and strawberries.

“Of course I [also] eat quite a few potato chips,” Otterman added while laughing and smiling before slyly looking at a can of Lay’s sitting on the kitchen table in front of her.

Last weekend Otterman’s extended family held a birthday party for their still-spunky matriarch, while Christ United Methodist Church in Toledo is holding a birthday open house for her this Sunday, Oct. 27, from 2-4 p.m. to which the public is invited and encouraged to attend.

Before ending the interview, Otterman said she knows good health at almost 100 years of age is a blessing as are her friends.

“My close friends who were my age, they’re all gone,” she mused before looking across the table at Gardner. “[So] I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

Happy 100th Birthday, Shirley! You have been and continue to be a blessing to your family, your friends, and your community!