Today is Jenet Borgman’s 100th birthday.

When asked if that was ever a goal she wanted to accomplish, she said, “Well, it wasn’t one of my greatest thinkings. I thought, ‘Take it day by day.’”

Now that the milestone has been achieved, she smiled and said, “I can’t believe it’s happening.”

Reflecting on her 100 years, the Bartholomew County native said it makes her realize how quickly the years go by.

“You’d be surprised at how fast they go,” she said.

From 2 to 4 p.m. today, her family invites anyone to stop by Autumn Trace, 1409 N. Ewing St., Seymour, where an open house party will be conducted in the dining hall in her honor.

“We have not sent invitations. It’s open to anybody that shows up,” her son, Larry Borgman, said.

Larry said as far he knows, his mother is the first person on either side of the family to reach 100. Her husband, Paul Borgman, was 99 when he died Aug. 23, 2020. They were married for 78 years, which is another impressive milestone.

“For both of them to reach (that age), it is quite an accomplishment. They had a good relationship. They loved each other,” Larry said.

“Maybe a little bit of it is credited to medical care, but clean living,” he said of his mother’s longevity. “Then I guess the good Lord up above plays a role in that, too, and we need to give him credit for that because that’s ultimately where everything starts, isn’t that right, Mother? He just doesn’t want you yet.”

“No,” she said, smiling.

One of her grandchildren, Kevin Borgman, said he credits her long life to eating three meals a day at home and making healthy food choices over the years.

“They ate healthy other than the bowl of ice cream a lot of evenings out on the porch,” he said. “Neighbors knew if you came over about 5 or 5:30 in the evening, they were under the back carport, you were going to get a bowl of ice cream before you left, and you weren’t going to leave until you ate it.”

Today, though, Jenet can splurge a little with cake and ice cream and another one of her favorites, pie. After all, you only turn 100 once if you’re lucky enough to live that long.

Jenet Middendorf was born July 15, 1923. She and her three brothers were raised on the family farm in the Jonesville area. She went to St. Paul’s Lutheran School for eight years before going on to Columbus High School and graduating in 1941.

She is a lifelong member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, also in Jonesville. She was attending a gathering of Lutheran church members in the summertime when she met the man who became her husband. Paul graduated from Cortland High School in 1939.

They were married Feb. 8, 1942, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. On Aug. 20 that year, Paul began serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was a sergeant in Gen. George Patton’s Third Army and was involved with the invasion of Utah Beach in Normandy, France. He earned a Bronze Star and several other medals and was discharged Sept. 14, 1945.

Jenet said she worked on the assembly line at Arvin Industries in Columbus while her husband served overseas in Europe.

“After the war, I didn’t work for a while. I had two children,” she said.

Besides Larry, the Borgmans had one other child, Judy. Jenet later worked at JCPenney in Columbus before becoming a homemaker.

“I think her main occupation was homemaker — excellent homemaker,” Larry said.

After Paul bought a farm in 1955, he loved farming and raising cattle. He worked for Arvin Industries for 28 years and was a manufacturing sales representative until retiring in 1972.

The couple enjoyed traveling around the United States.

“We did a lot of things,” Jenet said.

“Everywhere they traveled, they drove,” Kevin said.

As a hobby, Jenet has long enjoyed collecting decor, especially owls and other birds. She has several owls around her room at Autumn Trace, where she has lived for three years.

“I have a lot of them given to me. Also, as my husband got older and we had more free time, we did a lot of walking through antique shops, and that’s where I kept finding a lot of them,” she said.

“We have lots of owls that you can’t see because they are home in a tote, and there are more in the other room, and there are more other places,” Larry said. “It was just a cute thing. They even had one that was one of those cement ones that sits out on your porch, and a grandson has it now.”

Jenet also enjoyed taking care of her six grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren over the years.

“They always had to go to the pond and go fishing, so there were a lot of fishing trips,” Larry said. “The pond was just a little walk away from the house. Then there was a woods, and a lot of times, some of those grandkids liked to tromp through the woods, so Grandma would walk through the woods.”

Up and down the hill, Jenet recalled. Kevin remembers swinging on vines and picking mushrooms, and Larry remembers catching turtles.

“It was mostly outdoor things that I liked,” Jenet said.

“She never told us no if we wanted to go do something like that,” Kevin said. “She might be cooking something and she might say, ‘Just a minute,’ but she always took us. She showed me how to find worms underneath the cow piles out in the pasture and go fishing with. She took the fish off the hooks for us when we were too little, 5, 6, 7 years old. I could catch a catfish 2 feet long, and she would fight that thing and get the hook out of it for us.”

Larry said if his mother was with the grandkids, everyone knew they were safe and entertained.

“Not just stuck in front of a TV, so that probably is one of her bigger achievements, I think,” he said.

Jenet also liked to work with flowers and had a huge flowerbed, and there was always a bird feeder outside the kitchen window.

“She spent a lot of time watching for different kinds of birds,” Larry said. “Then if you look out the window here (her room at Autumn Trace), she has a bird feeder. That’s something we’ve carried even down to here, something for her to have like she had.”

On a daily basis at Autumn Trace, Jenet does some kind of exercise or therapy to stay active. She also participates in other activities at the senior living community.

“They have quite a few activities,” she said. “I like to do all of them.”