JOPLIN, Mo. —
She tore down a roof, replaced it with a new one and single-handedly tackled a 12-foot high mound of debris with nothing but a broom and her two gloved hands.
She’s done all this, and so much more, at the spritely age of 80.
“I’m not your ordinary 80-year-old woman,” Janette Hodson said with a devilish grin, as she bent down to grab an armful of debris before tossing it into the bed of a beat-up red Toyota truck.
While most women her age anticipate a life snugly atop the so-called lap of luxury, Hodson scoffs at such nonsense. An 80-year-old woman, she’ll tell you, can do anything a woman half her age can do, “if they only put their mind to it.”
Hodson, along with long-time friend Clifford Taylor, 63, are renovating a fire-gutted, two-story house at 311 N. Garrison in Carthage, right across the street from the popular Whistler’s Drive-Up.
And Hodson is doing a majority of the work herself.
“I do whatever needs to be done,” she said. “I’ve cleaned off the steps and swept out the trash and helped clear away the second floor where the roof collapsed. I’ve been up and down the stairs and even up on the roof.”
When asked why she does all the things she does, particularly climbing those 13 narrow steps to the second floor landing, she merely shrugged.
“I’ve worked all my life,” she said. “I’m one of seven kids and I was raised on a farm. I’ve always worked hard all my life.”
No stranger to hard work
Hodson was born outside Brookfield, a small farming community located east of St. Joseph. Her father helped piece together Camp Crowder during World War II, and she and her family moved to Newton County soon after that. They moved north to Carthage in 1949, “and I’ve been here ever since.”
No stranger to hard work, Hodson learned early on how to hammer and cut, how to mix and make cement, to pour it, mix plaster and hammer down hardwood floors.
“We had a little four-room house and over 35 years we turned it into a nine-room house.”
Hodson was also one of the most successful Avon agents found in Jasper County -- she sold the women’s products for 42 years. Upon retirement, she still found her hands itching for work, which explains why she’s tackled the work on the house with such enthusiasm.
“That’s what I want to tell them,” Hodson said. “If you want to keep going, you guys are gonna have to get up and out of that chair and do something. Volunteer somewhere, help a neighbor, get out and rake a yard, there’s always something to do.”
And Hodson does all this work despite a few battle wounds she’s acquired in recent years. For example, she’s not even a year removed from two hip surgeries that has her using a cane. She’s also had back surgery, and a recent fall dislocated her elbow, which prevents her from balling her right hand into a fist or opening it up all the way.
“I was reading in our (local) paper about an 80-year-old woman who was out painting a little fence outside her house, and I wondered, ‘What people would think about what I’ve been doing in this big old house?’” Hodson said. “But it’s no big deal, because I love to work. Always have.”
Working together, “we work a really good team,” Clifford said. “We always have.”
When the house is completed -- Clifford hopes by next summer -- the two will move into the house; Hodson living downstairs, while Clifford lives upstairs.
“There’s just nobody like her out there,” he said.
Lifestyles
Related Photos
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Janette Hodson, of Carthage, picks up debris from a house that she is renovating with a friend. The 80-year-old and her friend are doing all the demolition and renovation themselves. Globe/B.W. Shepherd
Discussion
80-year-old woman demolishing, renovating Carthage home
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