Mildred Traver

Mildred I. Traver, 101, passed away peacefully in her sleep on February 22, 2017, at Riverside, California. She was born on November 17, 1915, in Edgewood, Iowa, to Arthur L. (“Pete”) and Susan Ellen (Kauffman) Baxter, the third of eight children.

At age 4 her family moved to Oneida, Iowa. After completing 11th grade she went to work as a nanny for a local family. Eventually her family moved to Manchester. In June 1934 she married Howard Traver and joined him on his farm south of Manchester, which was their home until they moved to California in June 1960. Their 50th anniversary was celebrated at a reception in Manchester in 1984. At the time of his death in October 1990, they had been married for 56 years.

After moving to California she worked for the Harris Co., a department store in Riverside, CA, for 22 years, and enjoyed working in her yard, crocheting doilies, baby blankets, tablecloths, and making other craft items, keeping scrapbooks, entertaining family and friends, and traveling to the Midwest to visit relatives and friends.

During her 101 years she has witnessed much history and many innovations. As a child she and her siblings entertained themselves by making and walking on stilts, flying kites, playing with paper dolls, playing ‘kitten ball’, making and delivering May baskets, and utilized early “solar power” by showering with water that was pumped from the well into a tank and heated by the sun. She and Howard married during the Depression and began farming with horses, a hand pump at the end of the sink that pumped water from a cistern (drinking and cooking water was brought in by pail from the pump at the windmill), water for dishes and baths being heated in a reservoir attached to a coal and wood-burning stove, washing clothes with a washboard and two tubs, one for washing, one for rinsing, then hanging them on a clothesline; ironing clothes with multiple flatirons (each weighing five to six lbs) which were kept heated on the stove; picking corn by hand; shocking oats, milking cows by hand, using outhouses.

They raised a huge garden and canned and preserved food and had their own meat, milk and eggs available. In 1939 Howard helped solicit the neighborhood to bring rural electricity out in the country which allowed the house and barn to be wired with electricity and the purchase of an electric refrigerator (1940), a radio, an electric iron and a washing machine (1941).

Neighbors were close-knit and helped each other in many ways; including harvesting, farm chores and even shoveling out a country road in January 1943 so she could get to town to give birth (ten-day hospital stay was standard). Most of the people belonged to the Grange; a farmers’ association which sponsored social activities, community service and discussion of farming issues. They would gather for card parties on a regular basis and go to “big band” dances and square dances or roller skating. They endured ration stamps and V-mail during WWII (they each had brothers serving). During the winters in Iowa was when she learned to crochet and embroider.

Fast forward through indoor plumbing, private telephone lines (vs. “party lines”), tractors, farm implements and milking machines, advances in airplanes and automobiles and the first trans- Atlantic flight, more modern appliances and ‘luxuries’ (they acquired a black and white TV in the 1950s), witnessing a man on the moon and the Space Shuttle flights, and many other accomplishments, to the present mode of communicating, the Internet, Facebook and cellular phones.

Mildred is survived by her sons, Frederick (wife Bobbie); Kenneth, and daughter, Patricia Yonge (husband Dennis), all of Riverside, California. She leaves behind eight grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, numerous nieces and nephews and grand and great-grand nieces and nephews, all of whom live in California and the Midwest.

She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, three sisters, four brothers, her husband’s mother, his five sisters and two brothers and a great-grandson.

Visitation will be held at Acheson & Graham Garden of Prayer Mortuary (7944 Magnolia Avenue, Riverside, CA) on Thursday, March 2, 2017, between the hours of 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Interment will take place on Friday, March 3, 2017, at 11:00 a.m. at Olivewood Memorial Park in Riverside, CA.