Note: Kathleen Stauffer Mikkelsen, a resident of Mennonite Memorial Home, celebrates her 101th birthday on July 3. The following account by Kathleen is reprinted from the book "Bluffton A Good Place To Miss."

Click here for an interview the Icon conducted with her prior to birthday 100.

I was born in Blffton on July 3, 1917, and I was a twin with Gerry Diller. When I was two years old we moved to 668 South Main Street and lived there until I moved from Bluffton. My parents were Chester and Mildred Badertscher Stauffer. My dad owned Stauffer Plumbing Shop. There were two plumbers and he was one of them.

I graduated from Bluffton High School in 1935. The school building we attended is not there any more. Both the elementary and old high school are gone. In school is they wanted to separate my twin sister and me. They wanted to make us individuals. Our friends just had a fit so they kept us together. I remember that school was a fun time. We’d play on the playground. In the spring we did the maypole dance at Harmon Field days. We practiced the may pole dance on the elementary schoolyard.

In the winter we’d walk to school. They used to tell us that we’d eventually have rheumatism when we get old because our knees weren’t covered. We’d play fox and geese and make snow angels.

We’d take water and throw it on the cement of our sidewalk and then we could run with a sled and make belly smackers. So, we’d have our own ice rink.

I played the viola in the high school orchestra. Sidney Hauenstein was our director. He was a very good music teacher. He took our orchestra to the state contest. When I started we took violin lessons. But it wasn’t a violin. It was just the part with the threes and bow.

I was in the debate class, but I was more interested in accounting and bookkeeping, so I also took those classes. Paul Stauffer was our debate coach. I remember when the new section of the high school opened (today it is the old section). It was so nice. We had a new gym. I liked that. All the rooms were nice. We had great girls’ basketball teams with very good athletes like Marge Hoffer and her sister.

After school we went home and usually we had work to do. Right away we’d have to get supper because my mom sewed. She had a big sewing room and she was always sewing for people. We had to learn to do house work.

Our whole back yard was garden because we grew all of our food. We canned what we grew and ate it for the rest of the year. We always had a lot of food and we always had to work in the garden, and weed the garden. We’d have to snip the beans or take the seeds out of the cherries or whatever there was to do.

Big gardens were common in Bluffton. is was during the Depression. Our grandparents lived on the farm and we’d get fruit when fruit was ripe. Today I can’t see how the women did it. That was hard work. In the summer when it was hot—we had no air conditioning—it was miserable to do all this work.

We used to have tramps stop at the house and they’d knock at the door for food. Sometimes we didn’t have much for supper but we’d fix them a plate of something and we’d feed them on the back porch. Other times Maurice Fett, Johnny Lloyd, Billy Holtkamp would play on our back porch.

When we moved to South Main Street there weren’t any other houses there at all, only ours. That was 1919. We were at the edge of town. Later on, Sparky Fett built a house right beside us. Later Charlie Lloyd’s family moved two doors down from us. I used to go up and down the street and fix ladies’ hair. I learned how to finger wave. My aunt taught me how to that that. I would fix Mrs. Lloyd’s hair and Mrs. Holtkamp’s. They lived down the other way. I did this when I was in high school. I got 15 cents, so if I did two hairs I got 30 cents and that was enough to take us to the basketball games at the college barn. They had sort of a balcony like and we’d stand up there and watch.

Main Street Bluffton was very busy with traffic because it was Route 25. I remember when Detroit would retool its automobiles. All they people from Kentucky would come up and drive through Bluffton on their way to jobs in Detroit. We could see that traffic. I remember seeing the first motor homes. They would travel through town. They had little porches on the back. We thought that was so neat. We’d keep track of how many blue ones went by, or how many black ones went by. Of course, most of them were black at that time. We wouldn’t see many blue ones. It was fun to live on the Main Street.

We didn’t buy a lot uptown, but one thing I remember is that on Saturday night everybody went to town. People would go early and park their car on Main Street and watch other people walk up and down the street. Our grandpa Isaac Stauffer would give Gerry and me a dime for popcorn. But we didn’t want popcorn. We wanted ice cream. We’d get a little bit from Charlie Hankish and then go sit in the car and eat ice cream.

We knew that mom and dad never had much money, but we never asked. Once we had a savings account and dad had a hard time and so he told us that they had to take our savings account to pay a bill.

That was a big thing, to go to down on Saturday night. I remember that we’d go uptown and pay a bill and the clerk woud give us a little sack with chocolate snacks. It was wonderful to go to Hankish’s store. He had little booths in the back. at’s where we had our first chocolate sundae. It was a big deal. It was wonderful to go there. Because it was the Depression we didn’t have lots of things. We didn’t buy much or go down and have sundaes and ice cream and all that stuff. We did it once in a while and it was a treat.

Because it was the Depression and we didn’t have a lot of playthings we read a lot. We also roller-skated. The town had just paved Grove Street for the first time and it was all cement, smooth. Prior to that it was bricked. It sometimes seemed that the whole town and all the kids would go to Grove Street every night. There were a lot of kids out there. You could just skate around. It was a wonderful place. We skated uptown, too. We knew every crack in the sidewalk. In front of the Bluffton News, Ted Biery had sandstone instead of cement. When you went over the sandstone was quiet. You could just glide over it.

As I say, my mother sewed. She did beautiful work, so we always dressed alike. She would get many of her supplies at Lape’s Dry Goods. I also remember the dime store. It was called Shalley’s. That was an adventure to go to the dime store. They had trinkets and other stuff.

Our weekends were for families. We’d go out to our grandma’s or our uncle’s. We’d play Euchre and all the cousins would be there. We had a wonderful family relationship with immediate families— with aunts and uncles. Lee Coon was one of my uncles. Maynard and Herbert were his sons and we were real close to them. Bert Balmer lived in the brick house out by the Emmanuel cemetery. We went out there many times. Johnny Everett and Bert Badertscher were also related to us.

My Uncle Howard Stauffer made radios as a hobby. I loved to listen to the radio. I’d listen to operettas. I’d stay up and listen even after everyone else went to bed. When we were little we’d go out to our grandparent Badertschers for Christmas. they had a sun porch with a big Christmas tree. At that time there were little candles that were on a clip. They put the candles all around that tree. But we were never allowed to light them because that would be a real hazard. All the cousins would be there. One of the older cousins would be the Santa Claus. The limit was 10 cents—the amount that we could spend for gifts.

Our telephone was the kind that you’d have to ring. It was a party line. Rhoda Matter was the telephone operator. My dad belonged to the Modern Woodman Lodge downtown. The women’s part of that lodge was called the Royal Neighbors. Mom belonged to that. Modern Woodman had insurance. Once the lodge took us all to Cedar Point on the railroad. We went down to the depot and boarded the train. It was an excursion.

The only time we’d go anywhere on a vacation would be for our birthdays. We had an aunt in Ft. Wayne. So, sometimes our parents would take us up there for the Fourth of July. But, we never went on a vacation. No one that I knew of took a vacation.

We grew up on the St. John’s E and R Church. It was the German Reformed. The original church was Emmanuel, out in the country. As people moved to town they started the St. John’s church. The minister was the same for both churches. Today it is St. John’s United Church of Christ. Originally, the sermons were in German. My parents both spoke Swiss and I can understand a lot of it but I never learned to speak it. Some Swiss words have no English translation and we still use those Swiss words.

My dad and mom were devoted servants of that church. Both parents had a Sunday school class. Our whole social life was that church. We were confirmed in 1931. Sid Stettler was the Sunday school superintendent. When we graduated from high school the church gave us a Bible. I still have that Bible.

After I graduated from high school some recruiters came to town and I decided that I wanted to go to business college. I went to Lima Business College in the fall. I lived in Lima with a lady who had rooms that she rented out to girls. Then I went to work for a stone quarry and it was during the WPA and they were build- ing roads. Trucks would come up to the scale and I would weigh them.

There was an opening at Bluffton High School for a secretary. I applied and got the job. So, I worked at the high school with Gerhardt Buhler and Alvin Longsdorf until 1939 and I got married and moved away from Bluffton.

Some of the things I did as secretary were interesting. At exam time I had to type tests and ran them out mimeograph for all the teachers. I think I was paid $50 a month. I was living at home, and I had to give a tenth of what I earned to my parents, which was $5.

As I think about Bluffton in the 1930s, I’d stress the importance of families. Families were close. Still, it was a good time to be young. Bluffton was a wonderful place when we were growing up.