This Precious Life
At 92 years old, this Nevada Daughter shares why she’s not slowing down.
Loretta Young Eichelberger has a lot she could complain about. The year she was born—1930—was the same year severe dust storms began in her home state of Oklahoma. She was 11 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and she can still remember exactly where she was when she overheard the news on her father’s radio. She has been divorced, widowed and widowed again. She has been a foster parent to more than 200 children. But none of that has slowed her down.
“I rarely complain about anything because life is just too precious,” said the member of Red Rock Canyon DAR Chapter, Las Vegas, Nevada. “Sure, I get irritated from time to time, but life goes on, and I’m just going to go along with it.”
Her life has spanned a number of major events—some of which hit close to home. Take the Dust Bowl, for instance, which turned the Oklahoma of Ms. Eichelberger’s childhood into a desert. Still, she has some fond memories of this time.
“We lived on an oil field, and we also had a very small farm,” she said. “I learned to milk cows, I had a large garden, and my mother taught me to embroider. I had two other sisters, but I was the only one interested in sewing. At 13, I was designing my own clothes and sewing them.”
While she still loves to sew and enjoys making and donating baby blankets and patriotic quilts, that’s hardly the only path her life took. After World War II, her family moved to California, where Ms. Eichelberger started working—mostly in banking, she said—and started a family of her own.
In 1958, she moved with her husband and children to Henderson, Nevada, which is where Ms. Eichelberger discovered another passion: genealogy. But just as quickly as she picked it up, she had to put it away because life was becoming too jam-packed: volunteering with a state political party, enrolling in (and acing) a college course about women and politics, and becoming a foster parent to hundreds of kids who needed a loving home, some for just a few days and others for much longer.
It was also during this time that Ms. Eichelberger joined the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary as a public relations volunteer and boating safety instructor.
“I traveled all over the country to talk to groups about the auxiliary,” she said. “One time I was on my way to Alaska in a C-130. I was 63, and the pilot was 25. He announced that we lost an engine—yes, an engine—but we were somehow fine. I made it to my destination, and they turned around, replaced the engine and came back to pick me up. It was such an exciting thing.”
When many of her friends were ready to retire, Ms. Eichelberger was just getting started. The genealogy bug she caught in her 40s led to her compiling two family history books that identify assorted ancestors, including 35 U.S. presidents.
At the age of 70, Ms. Eichelberger fulfilled another longtime goal: going to college to earn her education degree. For five years, she volunteered at two elementary schools, both serving predominantly low-income students.
“The students were so delightful and so anxious to learn,” she said. “It brought me such joy, walking into those schools and seeing their smiling faces.”
When she was 76 years old, she discovered the DAR. “I was reading the newspaper and saw the local DAR chapter was going to have a meeting,” she recalled.
She started attending meetings, but a genealogy brick wall was preventing her from joining officially. Finally, she was able to break through the brick wall and join in 2021. “I really like the chapter I joined,” she said. “They’re so friendly and active in the community. They do so much more than I have time to do!”
