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Fifth Generation
75. Catherine Helen
(Kate) DAHLHEIMER1,2 was born on 28 Nov 1894 in Dayton, Dayton Township, Hennepin
County, Minnesota, USA. Her 112 years have been filled with hard
work, faith and the funnies, By Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune
John Dahlheimer shook his head when he first saw his newborn daughter Catherine.
"That scrawny baby will never make it," he prophesied.
The year was 1894. Today, his daughter -- Catherine Hagel of New Hope -- is 112
years old: the seventh oldest person in the United States, and 14th oldest in
the world as of last week, according to the Los Angeles Gerontology Research
Group. She has lived in three centuries.
When Hagel was born, Grover Cleveland was president. She was 3 years old when
the Spanish-American War began. Hagel remembers Chippewa Indians visiting her
childhood family farm near Dayton and her first glimpse of a new-fangled horseless
carriage on a shopping trip to the city of Anoka.
For decades, Hagel and her husband, John, who farmed near Rogers, had no running
water or electricity. A pot-bellied stove in the living room burned wood and
coal.
"She made her own soap most of her life," says Cecilia Gulczinski,
88, one of Hagel's 11 children -- nine are still living. (The family included
two sets of identical twins.) "She boiled it in the spring from grease she'd
saved all year.
She canned 400 jars of fruit and vegetables every summer, and sewed all our clothes
-- never used a pattern. She could do anything with a piece of material."
Hagel met her future husband at 16, on a visit to a cousin's home, where John
was digging a hole for a new outhouse with some other young men. Guys are usually
uncertain how to make that first move, and John was no exception. "The girls
went out to pump water, and the boys would throw little lumps of dirt at them,"
explains Gulczinski. "The girls would giggle and run away."
John was considered a good catch, says Gulczinski. Why? Same as today: he was
good-looking, and had a great set of wheels. "He had the best buggy in town
-- he was always shining it up, and he had a horsehair blanket and fancy little
ribbons on his whip," she explains.
But John knew he had to do more than toss clods of dirt to make progress with
Catherine. "He came to buy seed corn at our farm one Sunday," Hagel
recalls. "He asked me if I wanted a ride in his new buggy. I said, 'Of course.'
" Next Sunday, he was back. But he no longer pretended that he was coming
to buy corn, she adds.
Hagel sewed her own wedding dress, using lacy fabric that she had purchased at
a store on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. When her first child was born, she
made the dress into a baptismal gown. Today, more than 50 members of the Hagel
family -- including great-great grandchildren -- have worn it.
Over the years, Hagel's calm self-reliance often saved the family in a crisis.
Gulczinski was a particular beneficiary. She was the second child, and when Catherine
went into labor with her, John sped away to get a midwife, leaving his wife alone.
When he returned, the baby had already arrived, and Catherine was rubbing her
back and cradling her in her arms.
That was in 1918, the closing year of World War I, when a deadly flu pandemic
broke out. John came down with a life-threatening case. Hagel managed to keep
the farm going while she nursed him back to health.
The Depression brought more challenges, as Catherine and John struggled to hold
on to the family farm.
In today's mobile society, we tend to forget the unique attachment to place that
a family farm can generate. After John died in 1966 at 74, Hagel stayed on at
the farm for 30 years. When she was about 80, the farmhouse burned down. "She
simply refused to leave," remembers Gulczinski. "She insisted on sleeping
on a couch in the garage until we could get a trailer home out there, and the
house could be rebuilt."
Hagel finally left the farm at age 100 and moved to the North Ridge Care Center
in New Hope. That day, she set down her hoe for the last time, and left her beloved
garden of peas and beans, raspberries and cucumbers.
What's the secret of Hagel's long and fruitful life? She credits hard work --
a surprising prescription for an era like ours when we increasingly make comfort
our goal. But she also took a quiet hour each day to immerse herself in the newspaper
and enjoy her favorite section, the funny pages and "Little Orphan Annie."
Finally, Hagel credits her religious faith. As I prepared to leave the nursing
home after our interview, she sat with her daughter and granddaughter and together
they prayed the guardian angel prayer she had learned as a girl: "Ever this
day, be at my side - to light, to guard, to rule and guide." Catherine
Helen (Kate) DAHLHEIMER and John Peter HAGEL were married on 2 Aug 1916 in Rogers,
Hassan Township, Hennepin County, Minnesota, USA.
Catherine Helen (Kate) DAHLHEIMER and John Peter HAGEL had the following children:
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