Donna Grass, a resident of Sherman, recently celebrated her 94th birthday, and clearly that’s just a number for this active community member.
Grass celebrated her special day with a pizza party and birthday cake with the Sherman Senior Citizens group on Feb. 20. Members who turned out to wish her well included Margaret Cullin, Jeanette Hafford, Norma Bragdon, Esther Greenier, Mary and Kenny Warman, Gerald Bouchard, Maria Stroll, Bob Pulifer, Ollie Lancaster, Mary Willett, Gloria Noyes, Annie Atkinson and Arlette and Ray Gunter.
Friends say Grass is an amazing woman. She retired from Brookside Inn three years ago, where she had worked two days a week cleaning dishes and performing preparation work.
The daughter of Clinton Brown and Lillian Hogan, she was born in 1925 and was raised in Houlton. As the second oldest child, she said she was rarely able to get away with any mischief as a child.
She remembered sneaking into the house past curfew.
“Going up the stairs,” she recalled, “My little sister would go ahead of me. I would get caught every time. We were supposed to be in by 10 o’clock.”
Grass attended Houlton High School, but left school after her sophomore year. It was the era of World War II, and she joined the war effort. When she was 16, she moved to Dexter and worked making steel parts for airplanes. She spent a year working for Fay & Scott, which was a wood-turning factory that had been overhauled to help in the war efforts in 1941. There, she worked making various kinds of ordnance and the famous M7 grenade launchers.
Thankfully, she recalled, she did not have to make any parts for weapons during her time at the factory.
She returned to the Houlton area, where she met the man who became the love of her life, George Grass. One day George and Donna’s brother came into the yard on horseback. George was two years older than she was, and she thought he had the prettiest blue eyes she had ever seen.
The two began dating, and married in 1944 in a small ceremony in Houlton.
The young couple lived in Old Orchard Beach, working on projects in that area. When work shifted to building Interstate 95, they relocated to the Sherman area.
Donna and George had four children, Dana, Georgia, Frank and James. Dana lives in Bucksport, Georgia resides in Cambridge and Frank lives in Littleton. Donna lives with her son James, who relocated from Florida to care for his mom.
She said that raising four children in the 1950s was much different than it is today.
“We had rules, just like every family, and if they needed a spanking they got it,” she recalled. “Got a meal on the table, they ate what they were served — no special meals.”
Laundry brought its own challenges.
“What a difference doing laundry. No washers and dryers — we had to hang the clothes out summer and winter,” she said.
George passed away in 2003, and after his passing, she decided to join the staff at the Brookside Restaurant, where she worked until her retirement.
She spends a lot of time doing sewing for people, such as mending items, putting in zippers or fixing hems.
Out in the community, she belongs to a number of groups. She serves as president of the Senior Citizens group and is a member of the Star and the Red Hat Society. She plays cribbage every Thursday and attends music jams, and if someone calls and says, “Do you want to go out to eat?” she is ready to go.
She recalled good memories from a special trip three years ago, when she was 91. Arthur Shur took them out in his side by side to Oakfield to see the wind towers. The group went all around Mattawamkeag Lake and had a picnic at what was called May Mountain, which boasted a spectacular view, and even enjoyed a ride in a party boat all over the lake.
Grass, who still drives her car, says she doesn’t take any medications, which is quite impressive for someone her age.
Friends say “everyone just smiles” when she enters a room.
