Maurine Russell told friends, “I’m not really trying to see how long I can live.”
But she kept it up anyway and lived to 106. She died Feb. 6 at Wide Horizon nursing home in Wheat Ridge.
“I had a toe in the 19th century, lived through the 20th and am now in the 21st,” she told her longtime friend and neighbor, Elaine Collison.
Russell may have credited her longevity to a rock-solid optimism and cheerful outlook or to her unshakable Christian Science beliefs.
She was rarely ill, said Collison. Russell did have cataract surgery and a hip replacement. But she never acknowledged the surgeries later.
“She always said, ‘I just can’t be sick. I won’t allow it,”‘ said Collison.
“She never whined, was never in a bad mood and was a gracious, optimistic person,” said a friend, Sally Kurtzman.
Russell joined the Denver Woman’s Press Club in either 1935 or 1949, depending on whose records you check, and was president in 1955-56.
In addition to travel articles for magazines, Russell wrote a book, “The Art of Letter Writing,” and co-wrote another book, “Contemporary Letter Writing for Every Woman.”
Russell was a member of an exclusive club – the Halley’s Comet Second Time Around Club at the Gates Planetarium, reserved only for people who saw Halley’s comet in 1910 and when it returned in 1986.
Russell was so resourceful that her husband often said, “You’ll think your way out of any situation.”
Once Russell and her sister went off into a muddy ditch during a driving trip to South Dakota. Russell decided they could use the abundance of tumbleweeds to pile on the mud and give the car traction. They drove right out.
An early driver, Russell won two driving contests in the late 1920s in City Park. “She was a good driver, and she didn’t drive slowly,” said Collison. She drove until she was 95.
An avid golfer, she won the Cherry Hills women’s golf trophy in 1930.
Not much stymied Russell, Collison said, but she was afraid to fly.
Reared in St. Louis, she told Collison she had been taught racist attitudes but by the 1970s had decided, “I just must change.” And she did. She began tutoring black children and adults.
Margery Maurine Fletcher was born in Canton, Ill., Dec. 8, 1899, and graduated from high school in St. Louis. She earned a liberal arts degree at the University of Denver and taught at the Denver College of Speech.
On July 15, 1922, she married Clark W. Russell, a dentist she met on a blind date. Russell was engaged, but within a short time, his fiancée broke that engagement.
The Russells lived in the same house in east Denver for 60 years. She continued living there until 1991.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
