A Life Well Lived
Margaret Leard’s Century of Living…
At the start of the historic era of flapper culture, the year Babe Ruth joined the New York Yankees, and a month before women officially became allowed to vote, Margaret Leard came into the world on July 15, 1920. Born in Potter Valley, a small farming community 18 miles north of Ukiah that still only has a population of around 665 people today, Margaret grew up on a ranch that her parents owned, eating good farm-to-table food; staying active (playing baseball, basketball and walking); and then picking up the hobby of keeping close stats on the San Francisco Giants later in life.
“I hope she doesn’t wear you out too much,” the receptionist at Oakdale Heights says when her son Bill Leard and I walk in together to see Margaret. Bill grew up with Margaret’s other two children, sandwiched between the oldest Joanne Padilla and the youngest, Judi Norby. Both Joanne and Bill live in Redding while Judi lives in the Central Valley.
“She’s 105 going on 17, and a big Giants fan,” Bill says. “She’s never smoked or drank in her life, and she ate her food straight out of the garden. She was a pure young lady; and still pretty agile now for being [over] 100,” he adds.
When we walked in, Margaret was sitting in a cozy plush recliner chair in her sunlit living room. Family photos, birthday cards and a few plants adorn the place; number balloons hanging on her pantry across from her refrigerator spell out “101.”
The couch where Joanne sits faces a big green lawn lined with trees right outside her back door. Margaret used to walk around the grounds quite often and still motors herself to the dining hall for meals three times a day, even though her room is clear at the other end of the hallway.
What’s her secret to living so long?
“Usana vitamins,” Bill chimes in. “She’s been taking them every day since the early ‘90s,” he adds, referring to the vitamin/mineral/antioxidant supplement brand that supports cellular longevity.
“That’s right,” Margaret confirms. But it could be argued that Margaret’s longevity could be attributed to her lifestyle when she was young, growing up in Potter Valley.
“My parents are from San Jose and my mom got a job as a teacher up in Potter Valley, so they moved there,” Margaret says. “She taught out of a one-room building, first through third grade, three generations of families. Then when I started going to school, she moved to the upper grades, so she didn’t have to teach me.”
She called it the “double whammy” of education, going to school and being raised by a teacher at home. When she was not in school, Margaret hung out on the farm or played sports. Her family raised chickens and cows that provided them with fresh eggs and milk. And the Leards grew everything they could in their garden, such as watermelons, tomatoes, radishes, carrots, cucumbers, squash and fruit trees.
In high school, Margaret played basketball (as a forward) and baseball (pitcher and first base), where she developed a fondness for ball sports.
“I remember being on the court and my uncle yelling, ‘shoot it, Marg!’” she recalls, aptly drumming up a memory from 85 years ago.
Margaret met her husband Vernon in Potter Valley. They got married in Reno in 1939 and eventually moved to Ukiah. Vernon became a truck driver for PG&E, hauling supplies from Ukiah to Lake Pillsbury where PG&E kept a hydroelectricity plant. Margaret and Vernon spent about 40 years in Ukiah, including a short stint in Lakeport.
“Just long enough to have Judi,” 83-year-old Joanne says about their youngest sibling. When the Leards moved back to Ukiah, Margaret worked at the county treasurer’s office and a credit union.
“…All while raising all of us,” Bill says. On the weekends, the Leards went camping in Fort Bragg where their relatives kept seven acres of property they shared with two other families. (The 1948 movie “Johnny Belinda” was filmed in the area.)
“We’d do these big meals with 30-40 people on a long table, my great aunt cooking at the end on big woodstoves,” Bill remembers, also recalling how they’d go fishing off the bluffs. Margaret described where the property was, like she was just there yesterday.
In between his job of running supplies to PG&E, Margaret’s husband Vernon was what Bill calls a “dirt farmer”, hiring out crews to help him and Bill’s uncle plow, cut, and raise grain and hay.
“Most weekends were spent in the fields,” Bill says. At one point, one of their neighbors got a horse and wanted someone to ride with, so Margaret and Vernon bought a horse, too.
“All three of us shared a horse,” Joanne says with a smile. Bill rode the horse the most.
Margaret never really got into horses; she was more into watching or playing any sports that involved a ball. A couple of decades after playing basketball and baseball in high school when Vernon and Margaret were still living in the Potter Valley/Ukiah area, she went to a San Francisco Giants game. At the game, Margaret got hit on the head with a foul ball and spent the rest of it in the infirmary. And she never even got to keep the foul ball!
No one quite remembers how Margaret got so into the Giants, but Bill recalls his parents watching them on TV a lot after they moved to Redding. Margaret’s been keeping scorebooks at least since 1989, writing out the lineups in her stat book before every game. Then she watches every game intently, recording every ball and strike and tuning out everything else that’s around her. (Which is why there’s no point visiting her while she’s watching the Giants, as she will completely ignore you.)
Her favorite player is Buster Posey. “He got a home run all the time,” she says, mentioning she also liked Brandon Crawford and first baseman Brandon Belt, who played alongside Posey on the 2012 and 2014 World Series winning roster.
“That’s the best team they ever had,” Joanne says.
“No, the best team was with Willie McCovey,” Bill smiles, referring to the famous Giants first baseman who played from 1959-1980.
Margaret moved to Oakdale Heights in 2018 and kept up her walking, watching baseball and eating three meals a day. “When she goes down the hallway, everyone gets out of the way,” Bill says. She eats everything and anything, cleaning her plate most of the time.
Margaret says she doesn’t really have a favorite food but remembers last fall when she had a turkey with cranberry sauce at Oakdale Heights. “All of that was so good,” she says. For the last 10 decades, Margaret always looks to have a vegetable with every meal.
“Both were always quite the gardeners; they were always big on good soil. They spent 50 percent of their time in the dirt,” Bill says of his parents. It likely helped that processed foods didn’t exist back then.
“We cooked our own potatoes. Everything came from the ground to the table, or straight from the hoof,” Bill says. “My dad always had ideas about what to do with the ranch. He went out there and planted corn on the cob. He cut off kernels, boxed them, and froze them. Then the next year he had chickens. They processed the chickens themselves, put that into baggies and boxes, and froze them.
“Then we ate all of it, sometimes at 9pm if that’s when it was ready,” Joanne adds.
“We cooked our own potatoes and all raised lemon cucumbers, which are so good. And you can’t find them in the store because they have such a short shelf life,” Bill adds.
“I used to like squash, but only the way I made it,” Margaret says, which is boiled and mashed with salt, pepper, milk and butter.
When asked whether he had any particularly special fond memory of Margaret, Bill says, “Every day’s an experience with her. She’s always been there when I needed her, and provided food, shelter, clothes on our backs,” Bill says. “I think her secret to life comes down to the food she ate, the life she led, and her work ethic ‒ it is what keeps families together and creates longevity.”
And her dedication to the SF Giants may also have had something to do with it. If only she had that foul ball… •
