Evelyn Shaffer, who will celebrate her 102nd birthday this week talks about her life and how she feels that hard work benefitted her. She worked more than 12 hours a day when she was a teen ager not only going to school but working in a house until late into the evening. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

“Hard work” is the secret to a long life, according to Evelyn Schaffer.

Evelyn knows something about living a long life, as she turns 102 years old today at her home in The Meadows in Loyalsock Township.

Raised on a farm during the Great Depression, she is the oldest of 10 children. Living in the country meant she had to walk quite a distance to her school, a task that took about an hour.

The path to school became more difficult when it snowed, “Sometimes my dad put me on the mule,” she said with a laugh.

“He rode with me and would drag a big log behind it to make a path. You never knew whether it was going to drift shut or not,” said Evelyn.

When she was 15 years old, a typical day began with her walking to a couple’s home that she did housework for, breaking down their coal room stove, packing lunches and then making breakfasts for them. Then she would run back home and finish getting ready for school.

After school she would work at the school for an hour, sweeping the rooms and running the mimeograph machine. Then she ran back down to the couple’s home, cooked their supper and did their dishes. It would be 8 p.m. most nights when she returned to her home. Saturdays would be spent cleaning and doing laundry.

Her wage was 10 cents an hour.

Although she wanted to go to college in Bloomsburg to learn to be a secretary, that didn’t work out, she shared.

After graduating from high school in 1938, she did housework, from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. for a family in Danville.

“I only got a couple of hours off Wednesday, and then I had Sunday afternoon off. I got five dollars a week,” said Evelyn.

Evelyn married and started a family of her own. Her daughter Sharon, who passed away 10 years ago, was a microbiologist at Johns Hopkins and a son Michael, who lives in Elimsport.

She also has two grandchildren as well as great-grandchildren.

“I worked until I was 85,” said Evelyn.

Retiring from the GTE Sylvania plant in Montoursville in 1984, she also took in college students as boarders and worked at the River Avenue Weis Market bakery.

She has seen many changes in technology throughout her lifetime. Recalling the first radio her family got, “it was run by big batteries.”

She got her driver’s license when she was 16 years old in 1938, driving a 1933 Chrysler.

Starting the automobiles wasn’t as easy as turning a key or pushing a button back then, “you had to crank (start) the truck and you had to crank the Studebaker,” she said.

During a recent outing with her brother, Evelyn noticed a line of machines at a gas station and asked her brother what they were for.

“He said, well they were for the electric cars, the battery chargers,” said Evelyn.

“I don’t know if I would trust them,” she shared with a smile.

Evelyn drove until she was 98-years-old, giving up her car, a 1983 Chrysler LeBaron.

“It only had 7,000 miles on it,” she said proudly.

“I would still be driving now if they would let me,” she said with a smile.

Today Evelyn spends her free time reading, taking walks, exercising and doing word searches.

She doesn’t have big plans for her 102nd birthday, having had a large surprise party for 100th birthday two years ago.

“My son said [recently], ‘what do you want?'” she said.

“Oh, to go to Perkins,” Evelyn said with a smile.