Throughout her life, Edna Wagner has lived through a world war, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, a technological revolution, a battle with cancer, countless dust storms and even a shop fire.

And now, on Friday, she is becoming Colorado’s newest centenarian with the celebration of her 100th birthday, one year into the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’ve had a beautiful life,” Wagner said. “I loved every minute of it.”

Wagner was born in 1921 in a central Kansas town of only 2,000 people. One of 11 children, her parents were second-generation German immigrants, the Dreilings, whose parents fled to Russia during World War I.

As the oldest of five girls, Wagner went to school as a child but dropped out when she was in high school so she could help her mother care for her siblings.

When she was about 19, Wagner got engaged to her childhood sweetheart, Paul, who she met in elementary school. But right before they were to be married, Paul was sent away to fight in World War II.

“I didn’t really know much about the war but I missed my boyfriend,” Wagner said with a laugh.

Wagner then went to work in a store. She spent her days during the war working, movie theater hopping and attending baseball games.

She recalls one time during the war when she was sent smoked pork while she was rationing food. While the pork was on the train, mice got to it but she simply, “cut that away and ate it,” she said. “That was the first meat we had had in months.”

Two years after Paul was shipped off, he returned home and the two married when Wagner was 22. The pair lived in Kansas, Missouri and Oregon before moving to Wheat Ridge in 1962. Today, Wagner lives in the same house Paul first bought for her.

Along the way, Wagner and her husband had five children — three girls and two boys — who went on to give them three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, with two more on the way.

“She’s a great mom. She taught me a lot. I always give her thanks when I go to church and communion,” said Wagner’s daughter, Sharon Wagner. “She’s never steered me wrong. You never told me wrong in anything.”

Wagner is proudest of her family, calling them the most important thing in her life, next to her faith. She prides herself in having sewed all of her kids’ clothes and diapers growing up, and raising them on her own, without so much as hiring a babysitter.

Two dozen former students give thanks to beloved longtime Jefferson County educator

During her adulthood, Wagner also held many jobs, including at a nursing home, a Woolworth store and a Spartan store in Colorado that burnt down in 1965 while she was inside on her lunch break.

In her 90s, Wagner survived a battle with colon cancer which resulted in her having around 10 inches of her colon removed. And then nearly one year to the day after her surgery, she fell and broke her hip.

“I don’t know how I got to be 100 years old,” she said with a laugh. “I’m still hobbling around.”

Wagner has outlived all of her siblings except for her 91-year-old brother who still lives in Kansas. Her husband Paul passed away in 1982 and one of her daughters died from multiple sclerosis 25 years ago.

Wagner said no one in her family’s history has ever lived to be 100 and that she never expected to reach such an age, often joking that she has only lived so long because she is too ornery for God to want her back.

Despite reaching 100, Wagner said she feels like she’s in her 60s or 70s. She continues to live independently, cooking for herself, walking unassisted and having only begrudgingly given up driving when she was 93.

These days, Wagner enjoys gambling, bingo and helping to care for her great-grandchildren.

COVID: The Longest Year | Coloradans reflect on the longest month of 2020

“She’s full of stories and always wants to entertain us. She’s all about family and love and being together,” said Wagner’s granddaughter Amy Leifheit. “Her orneriness has passed on to all of her children. We all take after her and we all have big hearts because of the love she’s given us.”

Looking back at all of the societal advancements Wagner has lived through, she remains generally unimpressed.

Wagner said she knows just as much as her college-educated granddaughters, laments the days when one could safely sleep with doors and windows open and calls smartphones “brain books” because “if people didn’t have fingers, they wouldn’t know anything.”

And regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, Wagner has some good news: “it’s going to go away” just as she has watched everything else go away before.

“When I was a young girl, we had an outbreak one time of diphtheria and we all had to stay out of school for six weeks,” she said. “And when polio came, that was in the 30s. I stayed home and helped my mom with the kids.”

“And I’m not afraid of (COVID). We’re all going to have to die sometime.”