Wanda Stockwell’s naturally pessimistic nature fades when she gazes back instead of forward.

Perched on a favorite chair in her apartment on Monday, Stockwell is ready for her 103rd birthday party to get underway with 14 of her family members.

The sharp-minded, gracious woman with a kind smile never thought she’d live so long. She’s outlasted all her siblings and last November laid a daughter to rest, a loss that still hurts.

“I can’t understand it. Most people don’t live this long. Why have I?”

Stockwell suspects that being raised on a dairy farm in Fort Lupton, northeast of Denver, has something to do with her longevity.

“We had a big hill we could slide down in the winter, a pond we could ice skate on and a lake where we could swim,” she said. “And we had a mother who always had ho

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