TREMONT — At 102, Cleo Koch had survived a lot of things.
Koch was the subject of a Journal Star article which ran Nov. 24 on his 102nd birthday. The lifelong central Illinois resident was still exceedingly sharp, and he related memories of the area that few are left to recall.
Koch was born in 1918 on a farm in rural Tremont at a time when the fields were still plowed by horses. The Spanish Flu was raging around the world, and both he and his mother got sick.
“My mother caught it, and I wasn’t quite 2 weeks old,” Koch said. “She got it and she was nursing me, and her milk went bad. I wasn’t getting any nourishment, and the doctor said I wouldn’t make it. He didn’t tell her outright I wouldn’t live, but he said, ‘I wouldn’t give 25 cents for his chances.’ That’s pretty close to not worth much.”