Tue Feb 09 2010
By ANGELA ASSAF
Here are portraits of the lives of five local centenarians:
Margaret (Krutsch)
Sutherland, 100
She was born in 1909 and shares her birth date of Feb. 12 with President Lincoln.
In 1912 her family moved to a farm southeast of the Auglaize River, just across the Francis St. bridge.
Sutherland recalls the flood of 1913, during which their barns and outbuildings were destroyed. After that, the house was moved by mud boats and wheels, pulled by horses to higher ground.
It was Sutherland's father who taught her to love music. She recalls going to many events at church, at the courthouse and at barn dances where he would play. At around age 6 her parents bought her a piano and she began taking lessons.
During the 1920s they sent her to the American College of Music where she studied music, focusing on piano and voice. She received her teacher's certificate in music in 1927.
As a young woman she taught private piano lessons full-time and participated in the many shows and cultural entertainment that Toledo provided.
Creating music and sharing it would remain a lifetime passion for her. She continued teaching private lessons part-time throughout her life.
Sutherland retired from teaching at age 97, but has continued to share her music talent when asked.
"If you learn music, you can entertain others and make them happy," she says. "Then, you will be happy, too."
Margaret (Thome)
Konzen, 100
She had early ambitions of being a nurse, but was urged to follow her older sister's footsteps into teaching.
"In those days, you did what your parents said you should do," she says of that choice.
Upon graduating from Putnam County Normal School in Ottawa, she taught elementary school for 18 years (1928-46), at first teaching all grades in a one-room school outside Hamler. In the summers she attended Bowling Green State University and Ohio Northern University, Ada, to stay current in her field. When she wasn't studying, she was cooking with her mother for the men who worked their farm.
Back then, only unmarried women were hired as teachers. In 1946 she left the classroom to marry Larry Konzen. He managed a drug store in Holgate and later took a higher position in Port Clinton and moved the family to Oak Harbor. It was the first time at age 40, that she lived outside of Henry County.
After the death of her spouse, she moved back to New Bavaria in 1977 and took charge of the farm and resumed the rural lifestyle.
In some ways she got her wish to be a nurse as she was there to ease the suffering of her mother and father during their declining years, as well as her husband and sister, Celia.
One pleasure of reaching 100, she says, is that it made her more like her father who lived to be 95. Otherwise, the "joy of work," as she has always said -- has meant more to her than longevity.
When one of her then young sons asked, "Are we rich or poor?" she replied, "We're neither rich nor poor, but we have everything we need."
"Life's just what you make it," was her guiding philosophy.
Konzen has been active in worship, organizations and events in the Catholic church throughout her lifetime. She has the rare blessing of being the mother of a priest, her son, Joel.
Nelle Mae
(Kennedy) Amos, 100
Like many in her time, Amos grew up poor, which she once described as "a little uncomfortable at times, but not so bad."
The daughter of a blacksmith, her father was the mayor at one time of Ohiopyle in the southwest mountains of Pennsylvania near Uniontown.
Amos was born Sept. 13 or was it the 14th? In those parts, county records were sketchy at best. She prefers to celebrate on the 13th.
She proudly counts the English, Irish, Dutch and Welsh among her ancestors of origin.
As a young woman she worked in a haberdashery and was considered to be a sharp dresser. She knew the meaning of hard knocks, hard work and the value of simple living.
After her husband died in 1961, Amos moved around with her only daughter's family and helped take care of her grandchildren while they were still young. She later had an apartment in Xenia where she lived up into her 80s, then moved to Defiance in 1985 to be near her daughter once again.
A lover of crafts, back when her fingers were a bit more nimble, she could knit and crochet with the best of them and liked to make items for the needy as a member of the church's Ruth Circle.
"Grandma is very funny and always laughs a lot," says her adult grandson, Curt Hodapp. "She could be very stern and strict, but not in a bad way. She taught us how to be good people."
Mary (Rhoades)
Keegan, 100
She lived by herself on a farm in west Sherwood, where she had lived with her family since 1947, up until last March when she fell and broke her hip.
"Luckily I had on my Lifeline," she says of the incident. "That's what saved me."
After a short hospital stay (her first overnight experience) she was released into the care of hospice.
"She has been in a wheelchair ever since she fell, but she is doing quite well," says her son and caretaker, Rex.
Her hearing is fading, but her memory is quite good. She enjoys receiving visitors in her home.
In youth as in old age she has been blessed with good health.
"I have never been on a diet. I eat what I want and I eat what I like," she says congenially. "But I have never gone overboard on anything. And I never drank or smoked."
Keegan grew up in Hicksville and later Sherwood where her father owned a grocery and ice cream shop. When she became a teen-ager she requested to remain at home with her mother instead of working in her father's store with her other sisters.
"I was a relief to my mother," she says. "I helped look after the little ones and she taught me how to wash and fold clothes 'neatly,' cook and bake."
Before Keegan was born her mother lost three children within a couple days' time to diphtheria and whooping cough.
While Keegan was still in school she recalls watching the workers transform the mud and clay ruts through Sherwood into paved roadways.
She graduated from Sherwood High School in 1927 and married her high school sweetheart, Lego Keegan, two years later. She was working as a telephone operator at the time.
She recalls, "He came to the house to take me to the Hicksville county fair and instead asked me to go get married. I said, 'Yeah, Why not?' We drove to Napoleon to the minister's home. The minister's wife played the organ and my best friend was my attendant."
"It was a good marriage," she says.
By 1936 the couple had saved up enough money to begin making payments on a $3,000, 160-acre farm with a house.
All four of their children were born at home.
"Taking care of babies and young children was a full-time job," says Keegan, who never once hired a baby sitter.
"Cloth diapers had to be washed by hand. Your arm provided the motor for the washing machine."
The Keegans jumped on the bandwagon and bought their first TV in the 1950s but she admits she never sat down to watch it unless the whole family was gathered around.
For 25 years she was a proud member of the Ohio Order of the Eastern Star, serving as worthy matron of the Sherwood chapter in 1962.
She also sang in the choir as a member of Sherwood United Methodist Church and devoted much time to local efforts of the Women's Relief Corps.
In 1978 she made her first of many trips to the United Kingdom, marking her first airplane ride to visit her son in the Air Force, who was then stationed in England.
"I always said that I would never fly, but after we got up past 36,000 feet, I never thought about it again."
Luis Salas, 101
Today, Francisco "Pancho" Villa is remembered with pride by many Mexicans as the hero of the constitutionalist revolution.
Salas, who was 11 at the time, recalls the famed mustachioed revolutionary in less glowing light.
Previous to the Mexican revolution, Salas' family was well-off, owning a sprawling hacienda with cooks, housekeeper and farm hands. They had four meals a day in addition to sweet rolls and milk before breakfast and treats like real hot chocolate. They got around town riding burros.
In true Robin Hood style, Pancho Villa stole from the wealthy cattle herders in the north and sold them north of the border to fund his army. He also broke up the land holdings of the middle class and parceled them out to the widows and children of his fallen soldiers. Faced with a stagnating economy, he issued his own money; those who refused to do business on his terms were shot.
Salas still recalls when once his parents left him at home with the housekeeper and the Villistas came to the door. They ripped the shirt off the trembling Salas, leaving him shirtless and in tears for the reason they didn't like the tiger and lion emblazoned across it.
During the days of the revolution, an alarm bell would warn the townspeople of the army's coming.
"There were people running and hiding, especially the women," he relates. "You could hear the shots. When we came out of hiding you'd see people hanging and there were dead in the streets."
In 1927 Salas, his father and brother moved to the U.S. in search of work, leaving his mother behind. He did not return to Mexico or see her again until 1963 when he returned with his wife, Guadalupe, whom he had met while working in Texas. They had 14 children, eight of whom are still living.
Salas moved to Paulding in 1949 where he found factory work. He was later injured on the job and advised not to return to work for medical reasons, but compensated for his loss of income by working a number of odd jobs until he retired. Although Salas was given a short time to live after his accident, his wife went before him. He quit smoking on his own years ago, but admits that he always enjoyed a good drink.
Today he gets around with a walker, hopping on one leg; he lost his other leg due to complications with diabetes.
"As long as God wants me down here, I'm here," he says from under his black leather cabbie.
"My mother lived to be 100 and my grandfather lived to be 115," he points out.
The way Salas sees it, he has a ways to go yet.
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