Bio: Bemis, Grandma Amelia #2 (100th Birthday - 1968)
Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail:
dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org
Surnames: Bemis, Dimmitt, Herrick, Johnson, Church
----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 8/29/1968
Bemis, Grandma Amelia is 100 (100th Birthday - 29 August 1968)
Today (Thursday) is a big day for Mrs. Amelia (Grandma) Bemis, long-time Humbird
resident.
Today, she is 100 years old.
The celebration of Grandma and a host of friends and relatives will be elaborate
and genuine in Memorial Hospital at Neillsville, where she has been confined
since fracturing a hip bone four years ago.
Grandma is amply up to celebrating. Despite her confinement to a wheelchair, she
retains an alert mind, good spirits, her capacity to enjoy life and people. In
fact, Mrs. Robert Herrick, registered nurse in charge of her care, asserts:
“She’s as robust as a woman 60 or 70 years of age.”
Grandma Bemis (everybody calls her that) carries on a spritely conversation; and
when her daughter, Mrs. Lola Dimmitt of Norfolk, VA., visits here it’s hard for
anybody else to get a word in edge-wise. Mrs. Dimmitt will be there today, for
she spends every summer vacation in the area visiting relatives - and especially
Grandma.
While her eyesight still is good, Grandma reads but little anymore, she told The
Clark County Press. Not that she can’t but she feels that reading would dull her
vision.
“There’s just so much mileage in the eyes?” she was asked by the reporter. “Yes,
something like that,” Grandma replied.
Knitting and crocheting have been Grandma’s avocation for many, many years. She
still knits, and she has done so much of it for so many years she doesn’t have
to watch what she’s doing. She never drops a stitch. So, she knits right along
even now.
Asked the inevitable question about what she attributes then long life to,
Grandma Bemis allows it’s a good sense of humor. “I find a smile in almost
everything,” she said.
Grandma Bemis was born August 29, 1868 - four years after the close of the Civil
War - in Clintonville. Her parents were the late Mr. and Mrs. Jedulah Umphrey
Church. She was married in that city to Walter Bemis on July 20, 1890. Bemis was
a head sawyer, and the family moved around quite a bit during their early years.
They lived for three years in Plainview, Minn., and three years in Michigan, for
instance. Finally, the family settled down on a farm near Humbird, which Grandma
has called “home” ever since. Walter died on July 16, 1955, just four days
before their 65th wedding anniversary.
Grandma has four children living. In addition to Mrs. Dimmitt there are: Earl
Bemis of Neillsville, Clayton of Newaygo, Mich., and Percy, who is on the home
farm near Humbird. Her oldest daughter, Ina, is deceased.
In the last year Grandma has been presented with two great-great-grandchildren,
bringing to four the number of progeny thus far of four generations lated. Also,
there are 38 great-grandchildren and 15 grandchildren.
There will be a lot of hoopla as Grandma Bemis celebrates her 100th birthday
today in Memorial Hospital, and getting the biggest kick from it all will be
Grandma Bemis - right in the center of the action.
•••••••
Grandma Bemis Tuesday received a birthday message from President Lyndon B.
Johnson. The telegram stated: “My sincere congratulations upon your birthday;
May good health be yours through many more happy years.” Lyndon B. Johnson
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