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It's not every day you turn 88 years old, but turning 88 on 8-8-08 is something really special.
The phone's ringing off the hook at Adeline Proctor's Sugar House home. She's being flooded with calls to wish her a happy birthday. But at 88, she doesn't look a day over 65. So what's her secret? "Be happy, enjoy life, see the beauty around you and don't worry about, too much about things, you know. Worry doesn't help," Adeline says.
She added being Norwegian doesn't hurt. She said, "I'm Norwegian. We don't age."
She says things have changed a lot since she was young. She says, "I lived in South Salt Lake, and it was all farming then, celery farms all around us. Of course now it's all businesses down there you know."
She went to Granite High School, worked four years as an elevator operator at Hotel Utah, sold furniture and was a homemaker. She says she can remember when gas was 15 cents a gallon, and it was expensive! But her family didn't mind the expense, she and her two sisters and two brothers walked mostly everywhere and later took the streetcar that ran down State Street.
Adeline is the youngest of her siblings. She says they grew up in a haunted house, but her mother had a wonderful attitude about it, sort of a "live and let live" take on the unexplained noises in the house. "They'd open up the front door and walk across the front room and across the kitchen, and I'd say to mother, ‘Well who was that?' She would say, 'Oh, I don't know who it is, but if they want to be here with us, that's all right.'"
This perhaps contributed to Adeline's own advice for her grandchildren not to worry about anything. She says it could always be worse and there's always a bright side! Her daughter describes Adeline as a ray of sunshine.
Adeline has five children, 12 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Adeline's family has planned a Polynesian luau tonight to celebrate her special day.
E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
