Meet the 110-year-old California woman who survived the 1918 pandemic. What she remembers
About 100 years ago, when returning to her family’s east Turlock home from weekly shopping trips downtown, Doris Johnson remembers dropping face masks in a pot of boiling water.
She didn’t expect to live through a second pandemic, Johnson said as she pointed to her surgical mask during a recent interview, nor live to celebrate her 110th birthday.
Born on Nov. 6, 1911, as Doris Wickstrom in a Turlock house her father built, she was 6 years old when the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic hit. Her aunt working as a nurse in Oakland died from the flu, but Johnson said the H1N1 virus did not bother her as much as the coronavirus and resulting restrictions. At Covenant Living of Turlock, the care center she resides in, regular family visits to her room have turned into video calls and outdoor conversations.
“Oh, goodness, no,” Johnson said about whether she imagined another pandemic. “We did the 1918 and finished that out. Why would we have another one?”
But her niece Marna Klaproth said Johnson has remained positive and upbeat. Johnson uses a wheelchair and has hearing and vision issues, but Klaproth said the lifelong Turlock resident doesn’t have any dementia. After Klaproth told her aunt she needed to return to work because she spent the lunch hour supporting her in an interview, Johnson fretted, “You’re going to be hungry.”
Calling her aunt caring and nurturing, Klaproth said Johnson is a second mother to her and a wonderful part of her life. Johnson did not have any children of her own, but Klaproth said they always have been close and her family did everything with Aunt Doris and her husband.
“She doesn’t want to put anybody out,” Klaproth said of her aunt, even at 110. “She wants to be sure it’s not an inconvenience. She wants to be accommodating when she deserves all the love and the praise we can give her.”
Johnson celebrated her birthday with a family dinner on Friday, as well as a party with fellow care center residents. She must quarantine for two weeks after, activity director Denise French said. It’s a familiar concept to the retired nurse.
A life spent in Turlock
As she grew up, Johnson said, she never considered any career besides nursing. For fun, she and her beloved younger sister played with cats and tried cooking fruits from the family farm — including figs, plums and peaches — with kitchen toys.
But nursing fascinated her, so at age 18, Johnson went to the nursing school that Emanuel Medical Center offered back then. The hospital ran a nursing school between 1918 and 1934.
Johnson spent half of her training in Turlock and the other in San Francisco, where she learned at the city, county and children’s hospitals. She later worked as a nurse at the since-closed Collins Hospital in Turlock. Eventually, Emanuel bought the hospital, Johnson said, and she worked at Emanuel for 31 years until 1967.
As her husband picked her up from the hospital for lunch one day, Johnson said he asked, ‘Why don’t you retire?” Johnson asked him why she should, saying she enjoyed her work as a nurse.
“’I’ve always wanted to have a wife at home, so I could call home and she’d be there,’” Johnson said her husband told her. “I thought, well, maybe he means it.”
She loved retired life, but Johnson said Marty Wedin died of cancer after they had been married for 46 years since 1936. She married Don Johnson in 1987, Klaproth said, but in 2001, cancer also killed him.
Longevity runs in the family, Klaproth said, adding that Johnson’s maternal grandfather lived to 103. Johnson’s mother also lived to her late 90s, while one of Johnson’s uncles lived to celebrate his 100th birthday. But Johnson has set a family record.
“I don’t have any tips of any kind (for living to 110) because I haven’t paid any attention,” Johnson said. “I just went on and on and just keep going.”
Nowadays, she enjoys listening to audiobooks of all kinds, such as presidents’ wives stories, as long as they do not include explicit language. She hasn’t requested any new books lately, Johnson said, because she has a whole stack to get through.
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Meet the 110-year-old California woman who survived the 1918 pandemic. What she remembers."
