Dolores, 101 years young

“A lot of hard work, I guess.”

When lifelong area resident Dolores Sommers says it takes “hard work” to reach the age of 101, she’s not talking about exercise machines.

“She was always a busy lady!” exclaims her daughter, Marsha Vollbrecht.

Now a resident at Colony Court, Dolores celebrated her 101st birthday on Wednesday, August 2.  Born in 1922 “out on the farm,” she was the oldest of four children.

She married Marvin Sommers in 1949, and the two of them took on the operation of a dairy farm in Wilton Township from 1950 until retiring in 1987. They raised four children: Marsha, Debbie, Dennis and Mark, born between 1953 and 1960.

“I no sooner got done washing diapers,” Dolores remembers, laughing, “than the next one would come along.”

In addition to operating the–at the time–350-acre farm, the couple milked about 25 head of dairy cattle.

They also raised poultry including chickens, ducks and geese. They sold eggs, both serving buyers who would visit the farm and delivering to regular customers in town.

Butchered poultry was also for sale. Marsha describes times in the fall when the extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, would arrive at each others’ farms in turn to set up an assembly line of sorts, butchering sometimes dozens of birds to be delivered fresh to customers or frozen.

“I kept a large garden,” Dolores remembers. She names an extensive list of vegetables and laughs, “Lots of times, I had so much food I didn’t know what to do with it all.” Like most farmers of her time, Dolores used currently available techniques to preserve as much of the food as possible for future use. This meant “putting up” food in Mason jars in earlier years and freezing it later on. Dolores describes making many different kinds of pickles and processing tomatoes all through the last half of the summer.

When it comes to the garden, Marsha remembers the extended family gathering to dig each household’s potatoes and get them put away for the winter.

Asked about how technology developed over her time on the farm, Dolores remembers the “party line” phone. A certain number of households would all be connected using the same phone line. When a call would come in, it would be accompanied by a specific combination of rings, for example, two longs and a short. Party line users knew by the individualized ring who, among the several households, the particular call was meant for. When any family was using the line, all others had to wait until the current user was finished. It was also possible to pick up the receiver and listen in on other people’s calls.

Dolores comments, however, that she was always too busy to use her time spying on others.

A piece of technology she remembers being very glad to acquire was a barn cleaner. “After that, we didn’t have to fork the mess any more,” she says.

In addition to her work at home, Dolores worked for 15 years at Winegar’s Machining, which was owned by her brother at the time. She remembers being assigned a machine that produced especially small, fine parts, and jokes that she broke more than her share of the pieces she produced. Despite that, she remembers her brother was grateful to have the help.

While still raising her family, she also took seasonal work at Bird’s Eye for both the June pea harvest and the summer sweet corn pack for a bit of extra income.

As an active member of St. Johns church, Dolores joined the quilters, helping make blankets and quilts to be distributed through missions. According to Marsha, she also made covers for family members, perhaps most especially for new babies. She embroidered pillowcases and towels, another common pastime, and decorated special little “tooth fairy packets” as gifts for young children.

“She did a lot of volunteer work,” emphasizes Marsha, mentioning that Dolores served as a “Meals on Wheels” driver for 15 years. 

Given all that she’s accomplished, then, it seems completely accurate to summarize Dolores’ system for living longer than a century as “a lot of hard work.”

These days she enjoys the pastimes and company at Colony Court, visits from her 4 children, 8 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren, and the occasional treat–including deliveries from her son Dennis, owner of Grandma D’s Kettle Corn.