-Osoyoos resident Sterling Hauser to turn 100 on Dec. 28-

OSOYOOS TIMES-November 28, 2007-

By Maureen ParriottrnOsoyoos Times

When John Sterling Hauser welcomes you to his home, he makes you feel instantly welcome. After all, he's had a century's worth of practice greeting guests.
Sterling, as he prefers to be known, will turn 100 on Dec. 28.
While he doesn't seem overly impressed, everyone who knows him is. The retired orchardist says his daughter, Donna Hauser Fishwick, has already thrown him two parties “ one featuring her piano school students from Burnaby “ so the family gathering on the actual day in late December will be quiet in comparison.
Modest but articulate, Sterling enjoys talking more about Donna and her musical accomplishments than about himself. He also has a good deal to say about proper nutrition and what he feels the effects of depleted agricultural soil have on people's health, but more on that later. He realizes he's a direct link to the history of the South Okanagan, so he shares memories of his early days graciously.
Born in Olney, Illinois in 1907 to a 'Pennsylvania Dutch' family who emigrated to Penticton in 1912, Sterling arrived when he was four. His Uncle Cable had been in the Klondike gold rush and had purchased land in the Okanagan, sight unseen, while he was still in the Yukon.
Osoyoos and Oliver didn't even exist then, Sterling recalls.
The brothers hired out with their horse teams to plant some of the first orchards and maintain the ditches and flumes then used for irrigation. His father was also active in politics. Sterling liked the horses and followed his father and uncle into the business at an early age.
Horses are intelligent and likable persons, too, he says. Later he bought a saddle horse for one of his own sons and enjoyed riding it far into the mountains to hunt and fish. I've always been a nature lover.
Throughout his long career, Sterling owned or managed orchards in Penticton, Naramata, Keremeos, Kaleden and elsewhere in the Okanagan. Like so many other families, his was broken financially during the Depression and had to sell everything and start all over again. He was always interested in the latest innovations and the chemistry involved in farming. And when he finally retired at a youthful 70, he declined an offer to work for the City of Penticton.
I think they didn't realize just how old I was, he confides with a twinkle.
But his life was far from all work and no play. Sterling was a violinist, wife Evelyn sang and played piano, and they enjoyed performing at local dances.
Eventually he and several friends got up a dance orchestra they called Manery's Melody Boys after his buddy Fred Manery, also an instrumentalist. They had as many as five members sometimes, and they played saxophone, banjo, piano and violin. The group performed for lakeside 'jitney' dances in Penticton as well as affairs as much as 100 miles distant.
I remember playing in Coalmont once and driving over and back the same night, he says, shaking his head in wonder. Considering that this was in the 1920s, the roads were primitive, and they likely had to stop to change flats on their flivver more than once “ a far greater accomplishment than it would be today.
There's even a picture of us in the Penticton Museum, Sterling says proudly.
Daughter Donna began piano lessons at age four, and Sterling and Evelyn were so committed to supporting Donna's talent that Evelyn drove her twice a week all the way around the lake from Kaleden to OK Falls so she could take lessons. When Donna was declared a musical prodigy at age nine, they devoted themselves to doing whatever it took to help her bloom. She won scholarships year after year to music camps all over Canada, so they confidently put her on trains each summer.
At 16, she qualified for a radio show in Vancouver called 'Stairway to Stardom', and Sterling remembers the show's chauffeur picking them up from the Devonshire Hotel in a Rolls Royce.
I promised her if she won her class, I'd let her have a driver's licence, he says. Not only did she win the class, she won the whole show, so I had to make good on it.rnUnfortunately, Sterling was suddenly struck down by an almost-fatal pancreatic infection and spent 112 days in the hospital, so he had to listen to her on the radio instead of in the studio. But when he was discharged, he lived up to his promise to put Donna on wheels.
She ultimately went on to study in England, and he and Evelyn journeyed there for Donna's wedding in the '60s. I had to drive their rental car 100 miles back to the airport on the 'wrong' side of the road, but I managed to do it without killing anyone, he laughs.
Today Donna has semi-retired from administering her music school, but she and her husband still teach in their apartment in New Westminster, which is equipped with two pianos. She is also the manager of the New Westminster Ballet Society.
But back to Sterling.
After Evelyn passed away and he stopped orcharding, he looked around for a pleasant place to retire. He settled on Osoyoos' Golden Villas, where he has now lived for 24 years.
Sterling remains as totally independent as the day he walked into his retirement home. He still cooks for himself and has a best friend there in former Osoyoos mayor Bob Frost. He notes ruefully that one of the downsides of being his age is that most of his old friends have passed on, including his Osoyoos 'lady friend' of some 18 years. Even his sons Richard and Ronald are gone.
Sterling's opinions about nutrition were far ahead of their time when he first developed them. Even before he was diagnosed with diabetes at 70 (from his pancreatic infection so many years before, and for which he injects insulin himself twice a day), he had been doing a lot of reading on the importance of eating wisely and well.
He decided to give up sugar, white flour and other starches in favour of whole-grain bread and cereals. He has a recipe for cooked cereal guaranteed to make you straighten up and fly right “ for the washroom! Every morning he cooks six cups of large-flake oatmeal, two cups of corn meal and two cups of wheat bran in a double boiler, just as he remembers his mother doing. He recalls the vegetable and protein-rich meals she served as well, and proudly opens his fridge door to display the veggies and sugar-free fruit he keeps on hand.
The lack of vitamins and minerals in today's farm soils concerns Sterling; he suspects boron was the first element to go, and thinks zinc may be in short supply as well. (Interestingly, a CBC news item a day or two after he mentioned this echoed almost his exact words).
He thinks we're all ingesting too much salt around here as well, partly from our alkaline soil. And then there's the matter of exercise. He does senior-style upper and lower body workouts three times a day, having learned them at 77 from a physiotherapist at Golden Villas. This means he's stuck to them faithfully for 23 years! It shows; he's more flexible and fit than many a 40-year-old.
Sterling doesn't suggest that he has any secret to longevity, despite his moving into the triple digits next month. Then again, 'actions speak louder than words'.
Happy Birthday, Sterling! You're a jolly good fellow!