IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers HAPPY BIRTHDAY!—Imogene Gregory tells the story of her life at the Somis Thursday Club last week. The Leisure Village resident will turn 100 years old this month. Imogene Gregory, a Leisure Village resident in Camarillo, will celebrate her 100th birthday on Wednesday.

Gregory—born Imogene Reidinger on Jan. 21, 1909, in Kadoka, S.D.—has survived two world wars, two stock market crashes, the Great Depression and the Midwestern dust storms of the 1930s. The great-grandmother of seven witnessed firsthand the racial segregation in the South and has outwitted and outlived repressive social norms concerning women.

Last week, Gregory spoke of her experiences to about 30 fellow members of the Somis Thursday Club.

"She's so energetic and enthused about life," club spokesperson Beth Grindstaff said.

"I was surprised when I found out she was 100," said nine-year club member Jeanne Sanders, 75, who has worked with Gregory on club projects.

Sanders said Gregory impressed her by using a computer to prepare reports.

"She's just admired by everyone," Sanders said, because "she's capable of doing so many things. . . . She's a wonder."

Gregory graduated from college at the age of 21 and began teaching high school English at a school in Wilmont, S.D., where she met chemistry teacher Ted Keskey.

Keskey was popular with his students but not with Gregory. But after the two teachers had a long, intellectual discussion at a school picnic, her mind was changed and the two began dating.

Three years later, they were secretly married, choosing to wed in a small Wisconsin town because marriage licenses weren't public record.

Companies didn't hire married women in the 1930s because married women became pregnant and pregnancy meant an eventual job vacancy. Besides, hiring married women at a time when the national unemployment rate was about 24 percent meant fewer jobs for men who were the sole providers for their families.

Gregory said her school board threatened to sue any teacher found to be secretly married.

Meanwhile, Keskey left teaching to attend medical school in Minneapolis, and Gregory became a sought-after English teacher who also directed glee clubs and choirs. With her pick of schools, Gregory chose to teach in a small town in northeastern South Dakota that had a "fast train to Minneapolis," so she and Keskey could spend vacations and holidays together.

Their marriage remained a secret for several years. When Gregory left teaching and took a clerical position, her boss knew she was married, and she promised him she would not get pregnant, but soon afterward she did.

In 1939, Keskey had finished medical school.

The family, which now included their infant son Ted, moved to Alabama for Keskey's residency. But they didn't take well to Southern customs and traditions, especially segregation and some Southerners' disdain for "Yankees."

Nine months later they moved north. Gregory said she remembers eating breakfast on the outskirts of Chicago on Dec. 7, 1941, and hearing that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Keskey joined the army soon afterward, treating soldiers exposed to chemical gases.

After the war, the family grew to include daughter Cleo and son Don. In 1962, Keskey, who was also a pilot and champion cross-country skier, died from lung damage as a result of his wartime service, Gregory said.

She invested Keskey's life insurance in slow-growing but stable company stock that paid dividends, and the family lived off her teaching salary.

She had a son in college and two children in high school when she married Michigan lawyer Louis Gregory in 1965. His marriage proposal came with the promise of world travel.

"It didn't take me long to figure out what to do," Gregory said with a chuckle.

They were married in September of that year, and Louis went on to become a workers' compensation judge. True to his word, the couple traveled throughout Europe and Africa. He died in 1978.

Two years later, while visiting Cleo and her family in California, Gregory decided to trade the tornadoes of Michigan for California's earthquakes, and she moved to Leisure Village in Camarillo.

"I've never regretted it," she said.

Gregory quickly became part of her new community, participating in Leisure Village activities and joining the Somis Thursday Club and a women's organization at her church. She took up dancing and golf and traveled with local church and tour groups to China, Israel, South America and Eastern Europe.

Although she doesn't dance much anymore, Gregory enjoys attending Leisure Village dances to listen to music and watch others participate.

She takes regular walks, enjoys photography and is a member of the village's camera club.

But travel tops her list of hobbies. Gregory says everyone, especially high school students, should travel because you learn much about people from different cultures.

"I think you understand a lot more about what's going on when you have traveled," Gregory said. "I think it makes a person more tolerant."

It's an opportunity to learn about places you never knew existed, she said, such as the underground Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow, Poland, which is large enough to house a museum and several churches, one of which has a black Virgin Mary. Gregory toured the mines in 1997.

Many memories of the past 100 years are clear for Gregory. She remembers sitting in a South Dakota schoolhouse checking students' papers when a tremendous dust storm swept across the plains, turning day to night, and swarms of locusts of biblical proportions covering the South Dakota landscape.

Having had two successful marriages and having raised three children, Gregory has simple advice for couples: "I think they should persevere and be loving to each other." Every family has problems, she said; rather than point fingers, try to help one other.

Gregory's two sons and their families live in Michigan. Her daughter lives in the Tehachapi, Calif., area with her family. Gregory has five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.