At 104 years old, Gertrude Larson is back at her trusty Singer sewing machine she bought in 1939, sewing masks for nursing home staff and residents.
She left the family farm near Kathryn, N.D., Larson graduated from what was then Fargo's St. Luke's nursing school in 1938.
Gertrude was around during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. On a farm near Nome, N.D. She remembers her mother isolating all the kids on the farm, away from everyone else.
Decades later, and more than a century behind her, the longtime nurse — who is still as sharp as a tack — wants to help in some way.
She still climbs the stairs to her sewing room upstairs and works in the light-soaked room adorned with an immigrant trunk from Norway, and she says with the mask project, she is simply is doing what her ancestors did: Taking care of each other.
Love her!