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Irene Radcliffe has lived through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II and every war since. Irene Radcliffe has seen a lot in her lifetime, and she’s not done yet.

She took time from her busy schedule as the curator of the Onalaska Area Historical Society’s museum to attend her own 94th birthday party last Wednesday, May 28.

Still spry and energetic, although not as much as she used to be, Radcliffe was the social butterfly at the party, arranged last week by her church friends Judy Johnson and Betty MacEwen at First Lutheran Church in Onalaska.

Sandy Musolf, a retired teacher who works on exhibits at the museum, said she once heard Radcliffe say she can’t die until everything has been acquisitioned for the Onalaska Area Historical Society. “That’ll never happen, so I guess we get to keep her,” Musolf said with a laugh. “That really keeps her going. She has a mission to get all the artifacts in order.”

Part of that mission drove Radcliffe to make sure the Onalaska history book, “Sawmills to Sunfish,” was properly edited, as she’s a stickler for good English and grammar, according to Orlene Hough.

“She’s just an outstanding woman, a dedicated curator,” Hough said. “She’s done a lot of work for Onalaska.”

And that was after she retired. Radcliffe taught school for 40 years. Some of those years she taught high school — including 15 years at Central High School in La Crosse — and some years teaching junior college.

She also taught at a Japanese relocation camp in Powell, Wyoming from 1942 to 1945. Her entire teaching career was devoted to business education classes teaching typewriting, shorthand and bookkeeping.

After the relocation camps closed, Radcliffe returned to Nebraska, taught junior college for five years and then returned to her alma mater, Wayne State Teachers College (as it was called then), to become the secretary to the college’s president. That’s where she met her husband, who was a teacher at the college. They married in 1953 and in 1959, they moved back to the Badger State to be near his birth home and family in Melrose. They moved to Onalaska and she still lives in the same house where they raised their son and daughter.

“This used to be the countryside,” she said. “Now Woodman’s is half a block away.”

Born in 1914 to German parents in Wayne, Neb., Radcliffe remembers the Dust Bowl and Great Depression days as if they happened yesterday. “There were days there was so much dust in the air you could not see the sun,” she said. “One morning in particular we woke up and everything was covered in red dust. We figured the dust blew up from Kansas because there wasn’t any red dirt around us.”

Radcliffe was 15 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929, and the Great Depression had a lifelong impact on the way she handles her money. “While we lived in the country on a farm and didn’t worry about food, there was so much hardship,” she said. “People lost their farms, and it affected everyone. We sacrificed and made do with what we had. As I look around and see how wasteful we are today, well I just never got over the Depression and people might say I’m very conservative and I guess I am. We did without and we know what we had to do to survive.”

For Radcliffe, retiring in 1978 from Central High School was just a stepping-stone to an even busier life. “I’m busier now, I’m just slower,” she said. “I just have a hard time remembering names. It’s maddening.”

Also maddening for her is the diagnosis of lung cancer she received five years ago. She thinks it’s genetic — both parents and her two brothers had cancer, though only one of them died of cancer.

She learned during a health crisis when she was in college that natural foods can help keep you well, so she has followed that regimen. “When I was sick when I was young, I was in bed and looking at a Sears Roebuck catalog,” Radcliffe recalled. “I remember there was a section advertising kelp and the benefits of it. I asked my mother ‘can I order this’ and she said yes. She paid the money and placed the order and I started taking kelp and my health improved.”

She still takes kelp, but not regularly. She underwent radiation and chemotherapy and is in remission.

“I take vitamins, antioxidants and minerals. And I’ve been off cancer medication for a year and a half and doing OK,” she said. “I don’t have the strength or the stamina I would like to have, but I have to remember I’m 94 years old.”

Her secret? “I take it a day at a time. I’m conservative with my money. I firmly believe nutritional foods will keep you going,” she said. “Have faith and live a good life. I do think good morals, strong faith and everything in moderation are the keys.”

Contact Jo Anne Killeen at joanne.killeen@lee.net or (608) 786-6816.