Betty Lee Taylor Baker has certainly defied the odds. Last week a crowd of about 60 friends, family members and fellow residents of the Bethel Retirement Center in Modesto gathered to celebrate the longtime Ceres woman whose heart has been beating for the past 105 years.

The celebration included slices of birthday cake for all and an hour of singing from the seven-member Funstrummers led by Lorrie Freitas who interspersed trivia and reflections on Baker’s longevity between songs.

Freitas told the mostly octogenarian group of well-wishers that only four percent of people are in their 80s, 2.5 percent in their 90s and 0.3 percent over the age of 100. Those who reach at least 105 years of age comprise only a tenth of one percent of humans on the planet.

“She may be the oldest in the county,” Freitas said of Mrs. Baker who was born on June 17, 1921. “We get around to other nursing homes and this is the oldest birthday we’ve attended in 20 years. But the good news is there are more and more people living longer and longer so they anticipate by 2054 the centenarians will make up one percent of the population which would be quite an increase.”

Advancing age and her instability on her feet caused her to fall years ago and she can no longer walk or stand, said daughter Lynne Wright. When the children were forced to make the heartbreaking decision three years to move her from her Leslie Lane home where she’s lived since 1962 and into the nursing facility, they were met with great resistance from Betty.

“She wanted to stay at home but she had fallen a couple of times and it just wasn’t safe,” Wright said. “I was having people come in but it just wasn’t worth it.”

Betty had to leave her beloved community and her pet cat.

Wright reported that her mother’s vital signs are good but she’s also on hospice, “not because death is imminent but she has lost so much weight. She is barely 90 pounds. Her short term memory is gone.”

Betty struggles with hearing as well. When she was asked by Freitas, preparing to launch into a rendition of “Whistle While You Work,” if she could still whistle, Betty replied, “Push up?” When it was clarified she chuckled and answered, “No, I can’t whistle very well.”

Baker remained in her wheelchair for the hour-long party and sang along to many of the songs performed. Those songs included oldies like “My Blue Heaven” recorded when she was just six. Also “Happy Days are Here Again,” and “Ac-Cent-Tch-Ate the Positive.”

Baker’s surviving son Stan Baker was in attendance at the party. Stan Baker said his mother was fair but strict, probably as a result of her being a teacher.

Son Gordon died in a 1970s car crash and Steve died in 2022.

There is a lot she misses – Wednesday morning ladies Bible study group in her home with neighbor and close friend Sue Reynolds and three others. She misses gardening and doing yard work. While she no longer can attend services at Grace Community Christian Church, a spin-off of Ceres Christian Church where she was choir director for many years, she still reads her Bible and attending Sunday worship services at the facility.

She also misses attending meetings of the Persephone Guild but some members drop by to visit her.

And of course while Bethel is her home now, Betty misses Ceres, which was home from June, 1931 when she arrived as a red-headed nine-year-old girl, until she relocated at Bethel in Modesto. The Taylor family had uprooted from their home in Yates Center, Kansas, some 22 miles from her 1921 birthplace in Burlington, Kansas. But it was the Great Depression and Arch Taylor, her father, hit upon hard times as an auto salesman. Aunt Nell Reed in Ceres encouraged Arch and Bessie to pack up with Betty and older sister Patti (Patti Taylor LaPointe), and head west for a new life in California. They drove their loaded-down Ford all the way to Ceres, population about 600 or 700 then. Her father felt it was the best move he ever made.

Ceres warmly welcomed the new family. Arch Taylor eventually built up a successful Modesto insurance business, but dollars were still short in the 1930s. Betty and Patti were among just about every kid in Ceres who found summer work cutting peaches or apricots at Fred Moffet’s Superior Fruit Ranch located a short distance east of Ceres. She often would hitch a ride to the ranch with Petra Hosmer, the mother of her best friend in school, Wanda Hosmer.

In an interview with the Courier years ago, Baker said: “We cut fruit in the summer time to earn money. It was Depression time. We didn’t go without clothing or food or anything like that. We didn’t really think we were poor but there was no extra money whatsoever and all of us cut fruit to make money to buy school clothes for the fall.”

Betty recalled that Ceres was a small place where neighbor looked out for neighbor. She remembers how hobos would walk from the railroad and her mother would feed them in exchange for a little bit of yard work.

“Everybody did that. They trusted each other.”

In those days parents could safely let their children roller skate down Whitmore Avenue – sometimes as far as Hughson – since there was little traffic and you could trust most everyone.

Betty’s parents first rented the Bartholomew house on Fifth Street south of Whitmore Avenue and then bought the house next door.

Elementary and high school were “good years” and Betty was invariably a well-behaved student. But there was a moment of childhood terror when she was called into the office by Principal Walter White, a tall and imposing figure who was known for frequently using a paddle on the fanny of a disorderly student. Betty dusts off a memory of how this one boy teased her unmercifully – “I guess he liked me” – and when she had enough, raised her classroom ukulele up as if to strike him as he raised his elbow to block it with the objects colliding and the ukulele breaking. She had the ukulele as part of the fifth grade Ukulele Club organized by teacher Helen Froelich. Her march down the hall of Whitmore School felt like a walk to the gallows.

“It scared me to death, absolutely petrified me because I wasn’t a kid that ever got in trouble. He didn’t lay a hand on me. All he did was talk to me. I guess he could see I was petrified. He was very, very nice and sent me back to my room.”

Betty’s senior yearbook, a 1939 Ceres High School Cereal, include photos of her in music and drama productions. She outlived all of her classmates.

The war years were difficult for the young newlyweds, who married in the first Ceres Christian Church which is now the Masonic Lodge across from Whitmore Park.

Ron served in the Air Force and she was able to travel with him to live on bases in Montana and West Virginia. When she couldn’t go with Paul to Point Barrows, Alaska, she stayed with her parents in Ceres. After the war, life in Ceres resumed. Ron, a 1938 graduate of Ceres High School, returned to his former job as a watch repairman at a Modesto jewelry store but felt a calling to become a teacher. Betty was caring for four little ones at that time in their home on Central Avenue.

“Times were still hard after the war and so he worked two different jobs and took classes at Stanislaus State. And I started taking summer and night classes because I decided with a family of four children, that we were going to need money.”

Mr. White hired Ron as a math teacher at the junior high school (now Walter White Elementary School). Ron later became vice principal. Betty became a substitute teacher while studying to earn her credentials.

“It was not easy to go back to school with four kids. It took a lot of cooperation between the two of us. Oh I can remember going in the bedroom and closing the door and the kids knew Mom was studying so you don’t go in the bedroom. No, that’s not the best way to do it but that’s the way we did it.”

In those days the Ceres school superintendent forbid spouses from both being employed in Ceres schools so Betty started full-time at Paradise School in about 1961. After the rule was changed, Betty worked at Don Pedro School to teach fifth grade. When Principal Bob Yialouris asked Betty to take on a first grade class, she initially resisted, thinking “that’s such a responsible year.” Baker found the fit a great one for 17 years.

Retirement came in 1983.

Betty’s life changed forever on Jan. 8, 1970 when son and high school senior Gordon was killed in a tragic Whitmore Avenue car crash along with friends Terri and Vickie Sargent who were sisters.

“It devastated our whole family. It absolutely shook the town of Ceres and Ceres High School.”

The Bakers’ strong Christian faith helped to buoy themselves and others. She always said that “the Lord gave us the strength to go on.”

Church family and friends offered great comfort and support as Betty took three weeks’ leave from work.

Betty took three weeks off work to grieve. A friend later persuaded her to join the Sweet Adelines female barbershop singing group but at the time her reply was, “There’s not a song in my heart.” Burying a child will do that.

Eventually, she realized that she had to go on living and the desire for music returned. Betty was part of the Sweet Adelines for 30 years.

In their retirement years, Betty and Ron enjoyed traveling all over the United States and Canada. Their 58 years of marriage came to an end when cancer claimed Ron in October 2000.

As her age climbed, family became worried about their mother living independently.

“I remember they renewed her license, I think, at 95, and it wasn’t gonna expire until she went to 100 years old,” said grandson James Baker. His thought was, “I know it’s legal but maybe you let somebody else drive now.”

Today she has five adult grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Upon her 100th birthday, Baker told the Courier that good eating and taking care of herself and her Christian faith played a role in her longevity. Genes are also a factor. Her mother lived to be 98 years of age after a stroke placed her in a convalescent home; and her sister Patti died at age 99. Her father, however, died of cancer at age 79.