Mary Jane Fritsch, quite likely both the oldest person in Carroll County and the longest term resident who moved here when she was five, turns 103 on Friday, July 29. A birthday party is planned for the long-time nature lover and local historian at Green Acres Assisted Living at Holiday Island after her noon lunch.
Fritsch lived on a simple homestead near Hwy. 23 north of Holiday Island until this past October, when she moved to Green Acres. She was known as someone who knew the mountains around there like the back of her hand.
“Mary Jane is a truly remarkable woman,” everlasting friend Pat Costner said. “Her willpower, physical stamina and memory are the envy of women half her age. I especially admire her knowledge of and devotion to the natural environment of this area.”
Poco Carter, a longtime neighbor, said, “She an old time Ozark hill person who is a dying breed of people who live very simply and close to nature,” Carter said. “She knows every part of this mountain up here. She was walking in the woods still at age ninety-eight. You could hardly keep up with her. I remember one time she in her late nineties she walked home from the grocery store at Holiday Island to her house, and it was over 100 degrees. She took a break to sit by the springs reading her book to cool down.
“She loves animals, she’s a strong character. She has been a very good friend, and definitely a source of strength. I just love her a lot.”
Carter also admires that Fritsch is very well read and interested in what in going on in the world. She also thinks it is remarkable that Fritsch has stayed so healthy.
Barbara Harmony, a neighbor for 40 years, worked with Fritsch and her late daughter, Nancy Cooper, to write a history of the early settler days, Franklin Township Then and Now.
“There was an assortment of things about the history of that area that would have been lost otherwise,” Harmony said. “The thing I think that is so amazing about Mary Jane was that when she was walking in the woods, it was like she had sonar. She could practically be blindfolded, and she would be able to find directions. She and Francie Russell used to go and get themselves lost and try to find their way home.”
Harmony also admired her friend’s knowledge of the flora and fauna, and the fact that she donated 168 acres of land to be put into the Ozark Regional Land Trust for permanent preservation.
Russell has known Fritsch since the 1970s when she lived on Fritsch’s land.
“She was very generous letting hippies live on her land,” Russell said. “She has lived here most of her life and really knows the area like the back of her hand. She came here with her family after surviving the 1918 Spanish flu when she was five years old. They got away from Texas and wanted to be here for the healing waters. She has lived here ever since.”
Fritsch worked as a nurse’s aide at the Ocean Springs Hospital, and worked into her 90s for the Area Agency on Aging taking care of people younger than she.
“She really loves native plants, and knows them well,” Russell said. “In addition to the land she donated to the Ozark Regional Land Trust because she didn’t want it developed, she also donated five acres for the Grange building. She was very active in Oak Hill Grange on 23 North. Her family owned a lot of what is now Holiday Island. Her aunt had hundreds of acres where Sunfest and Cornerstone Bank are now. Another aunt had a couple hundred of other acres nearby. As a child, she would walk miles back and forth across the country from her home to her aunts’ houses.”
Russell said Fritsch loves visitors. They are welcome on her birthday or other days.
“She loves to talk about history,” Russell said. “That is what makes her the happiest. She has stories about things that happened in the early 1900s that were told to her by different family members who lived here. And she likes people to visit her. One-on-one visits are the best because with a lot of people, she can’t hear them well.”
Another long time neighbor, Sue Hopkins, still calls Fritsch the “Worthy Master,” a title she held as leader of the Oak Hill Grange.
“There are Granges all over the U.S. that provide support for farming communities,” Hopkins said. “They have things like youth groups, pie suppers, they make quilts, help people raise a barn and all sorts of things. “
Fritsch was also sort of her own Humane Society. Hopkins recalls her taking in and caring for a number of stray cats.
Hopkins said when the hippies moved into the area in the late 1960s and 1970s, Fritstch embraced them and sometimes sold them land for homesteads.
“All those hippies have been her best friends ever since,” Hopkins said. “We used to have informal hiking club out here. She had broken her hip after age 80, and I remember going on a hike with her after that, and she was way ahead of everyone else. The rest of us were in our 40s and Mary Jane was leading the pack.”
To learn more about Ozark Regional Land Trust go to www.orlt.org