Marian Tremain, 96, Carson City resident, has lived in Northern Nevada for more than 50 years and has maintained an active lifestyle through water aerobics, visiting wineries to pick grapes and attending church.
Photo by Jessica Garcia.
It was hard to make a decent living in the late 1950s, but when Marian Tremain graduated from college in Nebraska where she was born and raised, she found a job as a music teacher. It helped bring in some money to help support her family, including three kids.
“We had to get out of the dust, and here we had an offer to go to Reno,” Tremain said. “So that’s what we did. So then we sold our property, our farm in Nebraska and moved out.”
Tremain, 96, has been happily settled in Nevada for more than 52 years. She came to Reno in 1972 and has been in Carson City for about two and a half years and said she thrives on her faith, good health and family living next door.
“I look around and think, ‘How can I be so lucky to be living here at 96?’ ” she said. “And you know, that’s the best thing to say is that I’m so blessed. … I can’t walk as far as I used to, but I’ve got my cane and I use that now.”
Tremain’s affinity for a small-town lifestyle was ingrained growing up in Nebraska. She was born Marian Stapleton in March 10, 1928, in a hospital in Lincoln and lived south of it in Hickman.
“My dad was the county doctor in that little town, so that’s where I grew up in grade school and high school,” she said. “There were 13 in my graduating class. It was, what, 65 in high school, I think. But it was a small town. It was a good childhood.”
She married Charles Tremain, a Marine, and they moved to Beatrice, Neb., to live on a farm with a feed lot operation. But it created health problems for him, Tremain said. In 1972, they decided to move and considered the West after having vacationed in Wyoming, Colorado and other states. By then, he was working for an insurance company, and a friend who was promoting the Spring Creek development in Elko invited the couple to visit and see the Ruby Mountains.
Tremain said they needed a livelihood to continue. While visiting the office for only a few minutes, a developer told her husband he couldn’t use him in Elko but had an office in Reno and offered him work there. The couple accepted, sold their property in Nebraska and moved to Nevada. Tremain said Chuck would remain in insurance and investments for 50 years in Reno until he died in 2013.
Together, they had two sons, Charles Tremain II, Thomas Tremain and Marjorie “Mimi” Tremain, now Longero after marriage. Thomas died about a year ago, Tremain said.
Meanwhile, Tremain had been a music teacher out of college and a substitute to help fill in for a friend who served as a superintendent in Beatrice before the move. She used music skills she picked up as a child and would continue to teach in Reno for a few more years. She also participated in choirs, she said.
“The piano, I've been doing it since I was 5 years old, so it just came natural,” she said. “I loved everything to do with musicals, like ‘My Fair Lady’ and ‘South Pacific’ and, you know, all of those along the way. Those are always fun. That's probably my favorite part of the music world.”
Today, she remains active with Chapter J Reno of the Philanthropic Educational Organization, a group of women that began in 1869 that supports the advancement of education for young women from various walks of life through scholarships, loans and stewardship. The Silver State’s PEO was established in 1946 and has 37 chapters with 1,400 active members.
Keeping physically active, though, has been key to Tremain’s success, she said. When she retired, she had her first knee replacement in 1993 followed by a second replacement in 1994. It helped to engage in water aerobics at the Peppermill and the European Health Spa, which she still commits to three days a week, she said. Now she goes to the Carson City Aquatic Facility.
“I was there this morning,” she said. “I never miss. I mean, if I’m sick, except I’m never sick. I haven’t been sick for 20 years. I haven’t had a bad cold for, I can’t remember how long … but I like to say I’m healthy, and I figure I’ve got a really good immune system. That and church, and that’s what keeps me going.”
She also previously enjoyed picking grapes at California wineries, with Chuck producing wine as they visited with their best friends and toted tubs to bring back grapes from Placerville on an annual basis she said. It was a tradition they continued until retirement.
Tremain’s daughter and son-in-law live next door, and she attends Carson’s Saint Andrew the Apostle Orthodox Church. Growing up, she had attended the town’s only church, a Presbyterian campus, and in time, she and Chuck would join an Episcopalian church.
“I love (the church),” she said. “In our little town in Nebraska, we only had one church. It was Presbyterian, so that’s where I went all the time.”
In reflecting what’s happened in society during her lifetime, particularly as a teacher, Tremain said she’s observed the decline of discipline in classrooms and its impact on the generations, a pattern she saw into the 1970s and ’80s, she said.
“I don't know how to put it exactly, but the kids don't know how to act and their parents aren't teaching them how to act,” she said. “When I came out here and I substituted, I'd have no problem when I was a teacher. Everything was under control and I wasn't the greatest. You know, I'm not saying I was such a great teacher. I'm saying that the kids knew how to act when they got to class. They never acted up in class.
“I think God has gotten out of the pictures in so many homes,” she said. “And if you're back when I was in school, everybody went to church and everybody knew how to act. And we just didn't have problems in those days like we do now.”
But Tremain said when she looks back on her life, she thinks about how she is blessed with her family, including five grandchildren.
“It’s been a very wonderful life,” she said.