Long-time Webster City resident Gerry Duffy shown with her family earlier this year. From left in front are Steve Duffy and Gerry Duffy, hugging a few of their furry friends. From left in back are Marty Duffy, Jill Duffy, Jeff Warford and Mo Warford.

This is the story of a life. It began on a small farm in South Dakota, then thrived for decades in Webster City.

For Geraldine (Gerry) O’Connor Duffy, the journey of 100 years has been quite an adventure. The long-time Webster City resident will celebrate her 100th birthday later this month, providing a wonderful opportunity for friends and family to look back at how it all began, and the many joys and sorrows along the way.

It was a roaring great time in America in September 1924. The “doughboys” had been home from World War I for just a few years. They had gone “Over There.” They had fought the “Great War,” the “War to end all Wars.”

There was peace and prosperity in America in the Roaring Twenties of the early 20th century.

Calvin Coolidge was in the White House. Henry Ford was selling brand new Model Ts for $260, a price even the working man could afford. And the vast expanse of South Dakota prairie was mostly undisturbed by telephone poles or tall buildings.

Cities and towns enjoyed electric lights, even flush toilets. But the long distances between farms, especially in rural South Dakota, meant that most farms either generated their own power from windmills or gasoline generators, or did without. It’s hard to miss what one has never known.

South Dakota farmers in the early 1900s were a tough breed.

It was on a farm outside of Beresford, in the southeast tip of South Dakota, that the John and Theresa (Fleege) O’Connor family welcomed a baby girl on September 21, 1924.

Geraldine O’Connor was the youngest of 10 in her Irish Catholic family. She is the second one in the family to reach the century mark, and both of them have called Webster City home. Her elder sister, Celestine (Sally) O’Connor Propeck passed away in 2013 at the age of 101. Sally, as her friends called her, moved to Webster City in retirement to be close to her sister, Gerry Duffy, and was active in many community activities, even into her 80s and 90s.

The O’Connor sisters were never afraid of a little adventure. Growing up on the farm, Gerry Duffy related to her family that riding on the tractor was her favorite chore.

“It was actually her brother’s chore, but he made her feel like she was really doing the field work,” said daughter Maureen Duffy Warford.

As older brothers sometimes do, he also helped his little sister find trouble on occasion.

“This was the same brother that showed Mom how to smoke corn silk behind the barn,” Warford said. “When they were caught, she learned it wasn’t worth doing again.”

Like most farm kids, she learned how to work. Her least favorite chores, according to her children, were picking the eyes off potatoes, or collecting eggs from hens who objected to having their produce picked.

As a member of the Greatest Generation, Duffy witnessed much of American history.

She was five years old when the stock market crashed.

She was 12 years old when Franklin Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act, although many farms in South Dakota remained without power even until the 1950s and early 1960s.

She was 17 when Americans woke on a Sunday morning in 1941, turned on their radios, and began asking one another, “Where’s Pearl Harbor?”

Those alive at the time have recalled that they didn’t know much about Pearl Harbor prior to December 7, 1941, but they knew that the world had changed and there was a new war to fight.

As a young girl, Duffy landed her first job working in the rectory of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, where years before she had been the first baby baptized. She wasn’t just a secretary, but was called upon to keep up the churchyard and even clean up after the priest’s three Great Danes. That probably didn’t bother her much, as she still loves pets and is always happy to hold a visiting pet in her lap.

Eventually, she moved to Sioux City, where she found work as a secretary. On New Year’s Eve 1948 she met the jolliest of fellows, a Marine back from the war, named Martin Duffy. The couple married in September 1950. They were married for nearly 46 years before Martin passed away in 1996.

After a few years in Sioux City, the young couple moved to Webster City in the early 1950s, where they would become life-long friends with a number of families who worshiped together at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church.

These families shared children who were of similar ages, and thus began years of Sunday picnics at Briggs Woods Park, weekend camping trips at Twin Lakes, parties for every holiday, from St. Patrick’s to the 4th of July.

Warford recalled that many of the couples teamed up to take dance lessons together at Mary Helen’s School of Dance, owned and operated by the late Mary Helen Smith. The couples loved to play cards, Canasta, and 500, and no matter what the men claimed, the wives always stood firm that they never cheated, even if they had reportedly been seen passing cards between their toes under the table! Dance lessons had apparently given the ladies some great footwork.

The years when their children were young were among the happiest for Duffy and her friends.

“Mom’s favorite memories revolve around raising her family, and not just her own kids,” Warford said. “The friendships that we made with all the other families are very special. It’s just amazing that we are still friends with the people who we did everything with as kids.”

In addition to raising her children, Duffy worked outside the home in a number of jobs. She never let go of that South Dakota farm work ethic. She cleaned homes for a time, and then became secretary for the late Walt Raven at Raven Real Estate. Her boss lived next door to the family’s spacious home on Division Street.

When Raven helped bring the New Castle Inn to town, Duffy became the manager of the motel, which was the newest and nicest in the community in the 1970s and 1980s. An adjacent restaurant, Christopher J’s, was a popular establishment.

Duffy retired in 1989 and was a regular at daily Mass as long as her health allowed.

In her life, Duffy has seen the most amazing things.

The Greatest Generation won World War II and rebuilt, not only the nations of their allies, but of their former enemies.

Her home state carved a monument into a mountain. She was three years old when work began on Mount Rushmore in 1927.

With a flock of small children to raise, she gave thanks when Jonas Salk developed the Polio vaccine in the 1950s and saved millions of children from paralysis, or even death.

She saw men walk on the moon.

But in her own life, Duffy experienced the greatest loss a parent can know. She lost her youngest son, Mark, in 1981, and son Kevin in 2021, as well as daughter-in-law, Angie Duffy, in 2022.

The hardships never seemed to dim her spirit, though, and she takes pride in the family that she and Martin raised together in Webster City. Eldest son Martin Duffy Jr. lives in Webster City. Next oldest Steve Duffy, and wife Jill, live near Indianola. Warford and her husband, Jeff, live in Ankeny. She also has five grandchildren, nine great grandchildren, and three great grandchildren.

“I am proud of all of my children,” Duffy told a friend. “I’m just very happy with my family.”

Duffy is known to have a shoulder for a friend at any time, and has often been heard to say in encouragement, “Better days are coming,” evocative of her strong, Irish Catholic faith.

In recent years, she moved to a care center in Indianola. Her mind is sharp, but it is hard for her to hear on the phone. She does enjoy cards and letters. Until most recently, she enjoyed working on small puzzles.

Birthday wishes can be sent to Geraldine Duffy c/o Mo Warford, 3219 NW 14th Street, Ankeny, IA 50023.