Anyone with remarkable genes can live to be 100 — no skill set is required. But to live to be 100 while becoming increasingly loving, joyful, grateful, and selfless, and to do so with a better memory than most people half her age, now, that is a real feat — and talent. The clincher is that nothing in Shanta-Ma’s brutal early life would suggest such a happy ending.
The first of her family to be born in America, Hilda Densmore grew up on a farm outside Racine, Wisconsin; her family came from Germany via Ellis Island. The family was poor, and their hardscrabble life was made doubly oppressive by the cruelty within the home. “Hell,” “sin,” and “damnation” were favored topics of conversation; punishments were frequent and savage. A haircut without Father’s permission, for example, elicited being knocked to the floor.
At 13, Hilda was accused of committing a heinous sin when her abdomen began to swell. She was hitched to a plow from sunrise to sunset, and her protests of innocence went unheard. She was cursed and spat upon. After 10 months of torment, a visiting relative called a doctor, who took her to a hospital to have the 10-pound ovarian tumor removed. She was told that she’d never be able to bear children (to the later amusement of her children and grandchildren). Her family never apologized.
