Celebrating her 100th birthday on Nov. 17, Hazel Vancil of Clarkston is pretty happy with life in 2015.
“I’ve heard it doesn’t take much to keep me happy,” said Vancil, who has lived in Clarkston for the past 40 years. “I don’t think money makes you happy. You’ll be happy if you’re a happy person.?
If she could change anything, she’d like to still be able to drive.
‘You can’t drive at my age,? she said.
She and her husband, the late Paul Vancil, raised two children, Sue McKee of Waterford and Bill Vancil of Ortonville. She has five grandchildren, seven great grandchildren, and two great great grandchildren.
“She was a good mom. She did good job raising two kids,” McKee said.
“I didn’t do everything. I had help,” Hazel said.
Paul passed away about 34 years ago at age 66, after retiring from General Motors.
“I wish I hadn’t lost my husband that early,” Hazel said. “He was super.”
Over the years, she worked in grocery stores, made wedding gowns as a seamstress, worked in a glove factory, and sold Tupperware.
“I did a lot of sewing. I liked to work,” said Hazel, who still remembers the Great Depression in the 1930s.
“We went through awful times. You would either work or go hungry,” she said. “I don’t know what kids would do now if that happened.”
She doesn’t watch much on television besides religious programming, and she knows nothing about computers.
“I wouldn’t touch one,” she said. “I don’t know how to use them. I never missed it, I don’t feel like I did. What you don’t have, you don’t miss.”
Her advice to younger generations:
“Get all the education you can. That’s what I wished I could have done,” she said. “I don’t think I did anything special. I ate as much as anyone else. I made the best fried chicken. If everyone cooked that way today, they would say that was bad. But it was good for me.”