Her grandmother died at 98. Her mother died at 98. Her husband died at 98.

Orpha Emkes was certain she was going to die at 98. It seemed like a safe bet. The morning after Orpha turned 99, she received a call from her daughter, Jana Emkes-Gray.

“You’re still alive!” she said.

On her 80th birthday, Orpha’s husband, Bernard “Ben” Emkes, bought his wife a tombstone. “It was a joke, sort of,” Orpha said.

Now, she’s still with us and going on strong at nearly 100.

Orpha was born in Westbrook, Minnesota to a farming family with three sisters and one brother. On the farm, her family had pigs, cows, sheep and chickens. In the garden, Orpha’s favorite thing was the fresh potatoes.

During the Depression in the 1930s, their farm kept them fed, but it wasn’t easy. Orpha recalled how much she disliked butchering the chickens.

“It was kinda a nasty job,” she said. She was in fifth or sixth grade when she started helping out with the chickens.

After school is when her and her siblings were expected to help out on the farm.

Orpha’s school life consisted of 15 to 18 students in her classroom. She didn’t, however, go to a school with multiple classrooms.

Her school consisted of one classroom where Orpha spent her school time with her siblings as well. That classroom was full of connections.

“If they weren’t siblings, they were cousins,” Gray said. “I liked school.”

The day opened up with the Pledge of Allegiance, she had classes in reading, writing, arithmetic and others; and at recess many of the kids played softball.

While she enjoyed school, she did have a least favorite class, history. Looking back, she wishes she would have paid more attention to it.

Orpha received a grade school and high school education and, unlike most of her family members, she went to college. Thanks to her church and a local family she worked for, Orpha was able to afford tuition and housing.

Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa is where Orpha had one year of business schooling. The campus was small, not providing many opportunities to foster a social life. In spite of this, Wartburg is where Orpha met the love of her life, Ben.

Minnesota and Iowa have one thing in common, cold winters. Orpha sported a pair of white boots that caught Ben’s eye, which is what started their relationship.

“He thought those white boots were so attractive,” she said.

When Ben returned home to Illinois, he had to give up school because he was drafted into the army.

“Most of our dating was through mail,” Orpha said. The two of them wrote to each other nearly every day. On one occasion, while Ben was stationed in Washington and Orpha was living in Iowa, he hitchhiked to see her.

After three years of service on Christmas in 1945, Ben was released to Rockford, Illinois where Orpha took a train to meet him. They spent the holiday together.

Orpha and Ben were married June 9, 1946.

Orpha worked a few jobs in her adulthood including secretary at a packing company, at a Lutheran church and at an insurance company.

When Ben went back to school to finish his degree at Wartburg, Orpha was able to live on campus with others who were in married housing for students. She described this campus “like a campsite.”

After Wartburg, Ben transferred to the University of Illinois to finish his business degree. Shortly after that, he was asked to come to Seymour after a job opportunity in Danville, Illinois fell through.

Orpha and Ben then moved to Seymour, three hours away from where they were.

Even though Ben was pursuing accounting, his family wanted him to stay on the farm. This caused some turmoil within the family and Orpha took up some of the farming responsibilities for her husband back on the farm in Illinois. By this time, the Emkes already had three new additions Bernie, Joan and Mark Emkes. They were not only wife and husband, but mother and father.

During her stay on the farm, Orpha milked cows and did various household chores, inside and outside of the home.

“It wasn’t an easy life,” she said.

The second time Orpha came to Seymour, things went more smoothly. She lived on a farm in Reddington initially, but then realized that besides all the moving around she had already done, moving around with the kids was hard too.

Making sure the kids participated in their extracurriculars was tasking on Orpha from where she was. So, when they moved to town, they found a house right across the street from the Seymour High School. This meant the kids could walk themselves to practice and other school activities.

“My dad said he was a good planner,” Gray aid.

Orpha and Ben wound up with eight children, and the order they came in alternated boy-girl; Bernie, Joan, Mark, Sandy, Mike, Jane, John and Jana.

“Dad was always working on the five year plan, even when he was 98,” Gray said.

Orpha did a lot of traveling.

Mark, considered the family’s “golden child”, according to Jana, who worked for Bridgestone Firestone and was out of the country for 21 years. He lived in places such as Spain, Brazil and Germany.

While Orpha wanted her son to visit them, Mark insisted that having the family visit him in Germany would be easier on his schedule along with the educational benefits.

Orpha, at the age of 40, came to New York and began her trip around the world.

Germany, Hong Kong, and Singapore are just a few of the places Orpha had the chance to experience on her trip. To qualify for a specific deal, Orpha stayed in each location for three days. In Germany when visiting Mark, she acted as a babysitter for his kids. Although that part of the travel wouldn’t be described as vacationing, she also had a personal driver and maid at the house.

After retiring, Orpha was still making contributions to the Seymour community. For Oktoberfest, her and a small team of Zion Lutheran Church members worked on creating apple dumplings, a recipe that Orpha created that still lives on at Seymour Oktoberfest to this day. For the first year, 150 were made and now roughly 9,000 are made within the span of two weeks.

The money from the event goes to churches, missions and various local projects.

Orpha has dedicated so much of her life to the church that Gray said her mother should have been a deaconess. Ben also was actively involved in the church, working as the assistant chaplain in the army.

“They both had a heart for the Lord and in mission work,” Gray said. “They wanted to be able to do something; to make it fruitful and multiply.”

One of the many contributions to the church Orpha made was her work with Friendship Bible Class. These classes offered Bible lessons, crafts, snacks, and music to those with mental disabilities. The class was similar to a vacation Bible school, but it was every Monday night.

“We knew that on Monday nights, there was nothing we could do [and] supper would not be made that night because mother had Friendship Bible Class,” Gray said, so they would have to eat something quick.

Orpha Emkes has made an enormous impact on Seymour and is here to celebrate a spectacular birthday, 100 years. She has kept herself healthy, never having fallen extremely ill and even survived having Covid-19.

“With the disability of eyesight and weakness of the legs, […] her heart and mind are very strong,” Gray said.