106-year-old woman looks back on two pandemics

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    MONMOUTH, IL (WQAD) — A 106-year-old Monmouth woman still makes a commitment to her quilting group every Wednesday. Lois Paulson is young at heart with a mind sharp as a needle.

“I feel like I’m just one of the girls,” says Paulson. “They put up with me anyway. I kind of slam them once in a while.”

Now, during the pandemic, she says this is all Deja vu with the Spanish flu of 1918.

“I remember World War I when they had the flu, I was in bed with it myself,” Paulson comments.

“I lost my mom to Alzheimer’s and it just amazes me what that woman can tell me,” says Patty Albin, a fellow quilter. “And I’m just thankful to have heard the stories in her lifetime, what she’s done.”

Paulson has a daughter who is 81 and lives in Cambridge. She says she pays visits to her mom at least once a week.

But what keeps Paulson going?

“I tell everyone I was an old farm girl and we ate fresh vegetables and fresh meat off the farm,” Paulson says.

But at this wise age the women in the quilting group keep her sharp with their chatter. A life still on a roll, sewn into Lois’ young soul.

Paulson recently got rid of her car, but she did pass her drivers test.

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