By Tom Hintgen

Otter Tail County Correspondent

Gert Larson, who this reporter visited at the Pioneer Pointe senior living facility in Fergus Falls in late October, is a person who has a stabilizing influence on other people. She is an excellent listener who always provides encouragement.

This dear friend, to many people, is doing well and is alert as ever at the age of 108. You read this correctly about a woman in Otter Tail County who was born on April 4, 1916.

She was raised on a farm in Barnes County in southeastern North Dakota, near Valley City, and attended a small schoolhouse. Gert studied at St. Luke’s School of Nursing in Fargo. Her first employment was at Wright Hospital in Fergus Falls, which later merged with St. Luke’s and became Lake Region Hospital.

Gert and Ed Larson were married in 1940. Ed served in the United States Navy during World War II and Gert was able to find employment in communities in which they lived, including historic Williamsburg, Va. In 1945, before their return to Fergus Falls, Gert worked as a pediatric supervisor at a hospital in Fargo.

Gert loved the Lake Alice family home on East Lakeside Drive just north of downtown Fergus Falls for close to 70 years, before moving to Pioneer Pointe, and has many wonderful memories. She and her family, including her daughter Margaret who was a classmate of this reporter (FFHS Class of 1966), lived close to Lake Alice Grocery on the southeast side of the lake. 

For many of those years Gert’s late husband, Ed, worked in realty and insurance.

She survived two pandemics, the first starting in 1918 and the second that took hold in 2020. During the latest pandemic, Gert used her trusty 1939 Singer sewing machine to sew masks for nursing home staff and residents.