Local woman turning 100

Hazel Miller likes to play cards with her friends at the Senior Citizen Resident Center and read books.

“You’ve got to have some romance” to make it worth a read, said Miller, who turns 100 on Monday.

If there is a secret to Hazel’s long life, just don’t ask her.

“I don’t know,” Miller said. “I had a good doctor; he didn’t give me medicine I didn’t need.”

Miller grew up in Kansas, but lived throughout New Mexico for the last eight decades. Family and friends celebrate noon Saturday at the center, where she has lived since her husband, Frank, died.

“I have no idea I would live this long,” Miller said Thursday as she played her hand at Skip-Bo. “My husband has been gone about 20 years.”

Born Oct. 17, 1911, in Wellington, Kans., Miller was one of five children — three other girls and a boy.

She worked for seven years with the Southwestern Bell telephone company, including much of her high school time, and moved to New Mexico when she married Frank.

The couple had three children — sons Delbert and Jerry and daughter Marilyn — and moved back and forth between Belen, Logan and Clovis.

“When I moved back to Clovis (once), I worked at (Montgomery) Ward’s,” Miller said. “My next-door neighbor was the manager, and he told me he needed some help. I worked in the credit department, and I’ve probably got some enemies.”

It was enough to make her daughter-in-law, Carol Miller, laugh.

“Don’t worry,” said the younger Miller, a resident of Pensacola, Fla. “They’re all gone now.”

Hazel and Frank lived in Logan until his death 20 years ago, and she moved to Clovis with family concerned about a limited number of doctors in the Logan. She lived in independent living apartments across from the retirement center located off of Norris Street for 10 years, but moved to the center around 2001 because, as Carol said, “We just got a little worried about the winters.”