Longtime Ramona resident celebrates 80th birthday years ago
By JESSICA GILBERT
Ramona correspondent
(785) 965-2621
Frances Hanschu was surrounded by friends and family last Wednesday when she celebrated her 80th birthday in style! Hosting the party were her daughter Sharyn Mueller from Olathe and her daughter-in-law Jo Hanschu from Kansas City. "Randy was on a business trip to Mexico. He called before he went, and Sharyn's husband Mike had to work," said Frances.
The party was held from 2 to 4 p.m. at the senior center and what luck that it just happened to be the rainiest day of the month, to boot! But the rain didn't dampen the celebration one bit!
Frances was honored to have two of her favorite cousins at the party, Dean Batt and Elnora Siemens, both of Marion. "Dean and I were born just a week apart," said Frances. "He's the only living relative from my father's side of the family. Elnora's from the maternal side of my family. We went to school together as children."
Frances said this was the biggest birthday party of her life, so far. "I was usually at work when I had birthdays, and it was no big deal." But she agreed that turning 80 was indeed a " big deal," and had a great time.
Talking about birthdays reminded Frances of another time in her life when birthdays were a big deal. "When I was a child in school we always got to take treats to the kids in class," remembered Frances. "I took a little shoebox filled with suckers or candy bars. It was after the Depression and Mom had to save a long time to be able to buy those treats."
Frances remembered what it was like to have 40 classmates singing "Happy Birthday," and the deliciousness of feeling important because she could give a treat to everybody. "I felt so important that day — that's important when you're little," she said.
When Frances told me this precious story I thought to myself, "It's not just important when we're little — it's important to feel valued and loved and important even when we're 50, 60, 70, and 80!
There were four people named "Betty" at Frances' party which made getting to know everybody a bit easier: Betty Stenzel and Betty Ohm, both from Ramona, Betty Beneke from Lincolnville, and Bettie Batt from Marion.
In addition to a yummy birthday cake and tea sandwiches, we all played card bingo for some terrific prizes. Out of the games played, two of them were won by the same person — Betty Stenzel. The gifts were so great that Betty missed playing one of the games just perusing the prizes. She finally selected a lovely clock.
Now I'm delighted to finally get to write something about dear Betty. Every couple of weeks I call her to see if she's done anything I can write about and she always says, "Haven't done a thing!" And she says it even on holidays — and I know she's done something. But she won't say a word.
At the party I told Betty I finally had something to say about her and with mischievous delight she divulges that when I called her last week to inquire about news she actually had guests visiting her as we spoke, but didn't say a word about it!
"I told you I'd call when I had something great to report," teased Betty. "What's your definition of great?" asked my sister, Pat, who was sitting nearby.
"Probably when I die," teased Betty. "What's the fun in that," said another guest, "you can't even read about it then!"
"You never know," said another.
Betty is one of Frances' closest pals in Ramona. She and Norma Weber would often spend time with Frances down at the store when Frances and Clinton still owned the Hanschu Market.
The party didn't seem quite right without Norma Weber there. In fact folks called her home, wondering where she was. Later I learned from Norma's daughter-in-law that Norma's long-time pal, her dog Scotty, had to be put to sleep that day.
At noon Wednesday, Cow Camp Inc. was hosting 31 cattlemen from Oklahoma for a luncheon and a tour of their companies located in Ramona and Lost Springs. The visitors were members of the Okmulgee County Cattlemen's Association of Oklahoma, who were on a five-day tour of Kansas and Nebraska.
Guests from Virginia and Wisconsin arrived at our bed and breakfast on Thursday. The reason for their trip was to attend a special event at Tatge Manufacturing, which is located at the old Ramona High School. Tatge's is best known for manufacturing the WIK, a self-application system for keeping cattle free of flies and other pests.
In addition to meeting the employees and taking a tour of the plant, the highlight of the two-day event was a luncheon at the Lutheran parish hall in honor of Jenette Clark, who is retiring after working for the company for over 30 years. Jenette was office manager and this role was vital since she bridged changes in employees, ownership, and even relocation when the entire business moved from Herington to Ramona in September 2001.
Jenette and her husband, Walt Clark, who was a truck driver for Tatge Mfg. for 15 years, sat at the head table with Warren Gfeller, current owner of Tatge Mfg. Looking at the three of them, it was clear who the "honoree" was because she was wearing two corsages — one made of red roses, another of pink! "I couldn't choose just one, so I wore them both, side by side," said Jenette. One was from her husband, the other from her fellow employees.
Mary Ann Frantz coordinated the retirement lunch with the help of Jeannie Weber and the catering services of Wagon Wheel Express, owned by Lloyd and Linda Meier of Marion. "I think everybody in the company was involved in one way or another," said Jenette.
Warren Gfeller of Shawnee, owner of the company, presented Jenette with a most memorable departing gift. Knowing she loves to bowl, Warren gave Jenette a brilliant ruby-colored bowling ball inscribed with a message of thanks and appreciation for her contribution to the success of Tatge Mfg.
Attending the party from Ramona were employees, present and past: Paul Jones, Judy Gratz with Nate Bailey, David Frantz and Mary Ann, Jim Weber and Jeannie, Henry and Gertie Schubert, and Harold and Betty Ohm. Customers from the Ramona area who attended were Merv and Leona Deines, Jeff Deines, and Terry Deines.
Former owners of the company also there were Sharon Tatge of Herington, whose husband (now deceased) was once an owner and Ed Miller and his wife Pat, also from Herington.
Distributors who came for the event were Leo and Bernadette Abing of Wisconsin, Clay Lawrence from Virginia, Mark Wilson from Missouri, and Ernie Myers from Elwood.
Tatge's was a good place to work; they've always been good to me," said Jenette, reminiscing. "I'll miss coming to work, and the fellow workers, but I don't think I'll miss it enough to come back," she says laughing.
Jenette's last day of work will be April 30. She is wasting no time sitting still. "That afternoon I'm leaving for Denver on a 'sister trip'," said Jenette. "I'm going to visit my sister in Denver, Freda, and my sister Peggy from Texas is coming too."
Taking Jenette's position at Tatge Mfg. is Robin Zimmer of Lincolnville. She's been working with Jenette for two months, absorbing as much as she can of Jenette's 30 years of knowledge, so she can carry on in the thorough tradition that was Jenette's trademark.
Omelets were the order of the day for Saturday breakfast at our bed and breakfast. When the last guest departed for home, my sister and I tore into cleaning the house for the next wave of guests. These guests were coming for a party too — the 50th wedding anniversary of Paul and Edna Backhus of Tampa.
Now if you want to know about the anniversary party, I'm sure that Jane Vajner will have reported on it in her Tampa column. But I'll promise you that there was a second party going on when all of Paul's brothers and sisters (13 of them) and their spouses, descended on our Cousin's Corner house.
"This was just like coming home," said one. "The flowers along the walkway just seemed to be welcoming us." "Having us all in the same house was such fun," said another.
Early Sunday morning, I approached the Cousin's Corner house — we always like to have a picture of the guests who stay at our B&B. The men in the family were out en masse with car trunks open, already packing the luggage at 8 a.m. As I watched this traveling ritual, it almost looked like a ballet, with all the trunk lids up, and the men working in similar precision.
When I entered the house everybody was dressed in stunning Sunday best. "Paul told us to be in Tampa at their house by 9 so we can all go to church together," said Paul's sister, Ruth Taylor.
They'd had their cereal and milk with a special treat of Maggie's cinnamon rolls from Butch's Diner, which Paul brought to the house on Saturday. Paul's siblings were impressed with his care taking!
"So what was happening at the parish hall today?" asked Tony Meyer Sunday afternoon. Any time there are lots of cars lining the streets it makes folks in Ramona curious.
The Brunner family reunion was the event. Hosting the reunion this year was the Gene Hicks family of Herington. I wanted to report on who was there, but couldn't reach Gene or Mardell. Maybe next week.
But I heard a few details from others who attended. "There were 86 of us there," said Karen Brunner Mowat of Marion. "Seeing everybody again is always my favorite part of reunion because some of them we don't see during the year."
"They had a test of who remembered things about Grandpa and the old home place," said Orvell Brunner, who attended with her family. "Like questions about when Grandpa got a new car, what happened to the old one? It was a lot of fun."
From a child's viewpoint, the playing is probably most memorable. "I got candy from the piñata," said Brenna Shields, who was having trouble even pronouncing the word. "I hit it two times real hard and one time soft, but I didn't break it," she said with a grin.
Brenna, her mom, and her sisters had stopped by our house Sunday evening to talk about Pat writing an article about the Centre Cougars soccer team. Brenna, who is in kindergarten, was chatting with me about important things — like getting fistfuls of candy. When I asked her where she'd gotten such a bounty, her mom said they'd been at the Brunner reunion.
"Oh, my, I'll have to put that quote in my column," I said. I usually have to work to get the adults to give a quote — but the kids are a piece of cake!
Speaking of soccer, you'll have to wait until next week's newspaper to read about the recent victory of one of the Centre Cougar's teams, but I can tell you that Bryanna Svoboda, first grader at Centre, made three goals at Sunday's game against Herington. They won 5 to 0. Bryanna was so excited she had to call our house, trying to track down her grandma, Frances Buxman, to share the thrill of victory.
Frances and her son, Tooltime Tim, were having an Italian supper with Pat, me, and our mom, Martha. I got inspired to make French bread, then thought spaghetti sounded good, and got carried away and also made ravioli in lemon cream sauce. It was too good to just eat alone, so we made it into a party.
"Last week I took Bryanna to Hope for her soccer game while Sandra took Cole to his game somewhere else," said Frances. "And there sitting in her lawn chair was Leona Deines. She had to bring one of Jeff's kids to Hope, too." I've heard of "soccer moms" but these two dedicated Grandmas deserve a medal as well!
I asked Bryanna what it felt like to make three goals. "It felt pretty good," she said with uncharacteristic shyness. "Was it hard to do?" I asked. "Not very," she replied matter-of-factly. "What made you want to play soccer instead of some other sport?" I queried. "I thought I'd like to make some goals," she said simply. Ah, the simplicity of childhood — you know what you want to do and you do it. There's a lot of wisdom in that!
Paula and Warren Fike knew what they wanted to do this last weekend — see terrific shows and eat great food. "We went on another Branson tour with our daughter Linda and her husband," said Paula. "We got there Friday evening, saw one show, and took in three more on Saturday."
Paula said they went out on the showboat where the featured attraction was two acrobats from Australia. "The food was terrific, too," said Paula with enthusiasm.
Memorial Day is approaching and you are invited to join the celebration. The Rev. Clark Davis, pastor for Trinity Lutheran Church in Ramona and St. John's Lutheran Church in Tampa, will be the speaker at the memorial service at Lewis Cemetery at 10:30 a.m. May 26, according to Orvell Brunner, who is coordinating the activities this year.
My mother Martha Ehrhardt, my sister Pat, and I are honored to be invited to sing at the service.
The traditional Memorial Day picnic will take place at noon in the Ramona Park. "Meat and the beverage is furnished," said Orvell, "and folks are asked to bring salad or dessert to add to the meal." Donations are appreciated.
Pat and I were honored to speak Sunday to the Beta Sigma Phi members at Herington for their Founder's Day program. This service organization plans several big events in Herington each year. One of them is the egg hunt held at the park. As we talked with Carol Idelman, who invited us to speak, she said they stuffed several thousand eggs — close to 5,000 as I recall! And we thought 350 was a lot for our Ramona egg hunt!
