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Category: Community News Community News
Published: 06 December 2017 06 December 2017

Eunice Schoellhammer celebrates her 100th birthday on February 17, 2018. Eunice was born and raised in Springfield, Illinois. She is the daughter of Martha and Roscoe Maschger. Her four siblings were Howard Maschger, Helen Maschger Neill, June Maschger Turley, and William Maschger, all of whom are deceased. She is a 1936 graduate of Springfield High School.

As a young woman in Springfield, Eunice was the office manager of a medical practice. In her free time she was active in the Repertory Guild Theater. She remembers playing Emily in a production of Our Town and "the other woman" in Craig's Wife. She also had roles in My Darling Daughter and The Women. Her early attraction to the theater resurfaced decades later. In her nineties she crafted the role of a fictional innkeeper's wife during Biblical times in a monolog she wrote and performed in her church for several Christmas seasons.

Eunice married Francis "Mac" McMurry in 1942 and lived in Springfield until 1959, when she, Mac and their son Bob moved to Minneapolis. Upon Mac's death in 1961 Eunice and Bob moved west to join her sister, June, in California. There, Eunice was employed as a bookkeeper for Congress Life Insurance. While attending Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, Eunice met Floyd Schoellhammer, a widower, at a church camp. Floyd was recently retired and was moving to a small community in southwestern New Mexico. They shared a mutual love of God and writing, which led to a correspondence courtship. They married in 1972 and made a life together in Cliff, New Mexico. When Floyd passed away in 1997, Eunice rejoined her sister in California. After June's death in 2002, Eunice moved to Redmond, Washington to be near her son and granddaughter, Colleen. Still bright, cheerful and sharp as a tack, Eunice attributes her long life and continuing good health to the grace of God.