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Gram's Century
Ruby Barnhill Sarver
Born March 14, 1898, in a sod house in Custer County, Nebraska
Died Monday, August 2, 1999, at 101

Her Century  ♦  Things Gram Said  ♦  Write to Cindy

My grandmother, Ruby Sarver, died at the care center on Monday, August 2, 1999, in her sleep. She was 101 years old. We buried her on Friday, August 6, next to Grandpa Lewis in the cemetery behind the Willow Table Methodist Church, a mile from where she was born. Nearly two hundred people came, which is not bad for a woman who outlived almost everybody she grew up with. I'm Cindy Morrison. I'm 46, I supervise the medical records department at a hospital in Omaha, and I am Gram's daughter Thelma's oldest girl. In 1984 I bought a little cassette recorder and started asking Gram to tell me about the old days. She thought it was silly. Then she started calling me when she remembered something new. I have eleven tapes and two spiral notebooks, and I always meant to put it all in order someday. When she died I decided someday was now. So here is her century, a year or two at a time, the way she told it to me, with what was going on in the rest of the world beside it. She'd want me to say that she didn't think her life was anything special. She was wrong about that, and it's about the only thing I ever knew her to be wrong about. (I put this up the week after the funeral and I'm still adding to it as Mom and Aunt Elsie remember things. Corrections from family are welcome!)

Year	Gram	The World
1898	Born March 14 in the sod house on her folks' claim, the third of five children of Carl and Maud Barnhill. Her mother said it snowed that night and the midwife had to stay three days.	War with Spain, April to August. In Omaha, the Trans-Mississippi Exposition opens in June.
1901	Her first memory: a bull snake coming out of the sod wall over her bed. Her mother killed it with the stove poker and went back to making bread.	President McKinley is shot in September and dies; Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.
1903-04	Her father builds a frame house, and the soddy becomes the chicken house. Ruby starts school at six, walking two miles each way to a one-room sod schoolhouse with her big brother Noah.	The Wright brothers fly at Kitty Hawk, December 17, 1903.
1906	Wins the spelling bee at school on the word "separate," which she said she has spelled right every day since out of pride.	The San Francisco earthquake, April 18.
1909	Sees the first automobile in that end of the county, which belonged to Dr. Broome. It came up the road at the speed of a trotting horse, and the Barnhills' team ran clear through a fence. Her father said the thing would never catch on.	Ford's Model T had come out the fall before, in October 1908.
1912	Reads the weekly paper aloud to her father every Saturday night, because his eyes were going. That spring it was all about the big ship.	The Titanic sinks, April 15. New Mexico and Arizona become states.
1914	Finishes the eighth grade and passes the county examination. Goes to high school in town, boarding with her Aunt Octavia and doing the ironing for her keep.	War begins in Europe in August.
1916	At eighteen, gets her teaching certificate and takes the school in District 47: eleven pupils, first grade through eighth, in one room with a coal stove. Some of the big boys were nearly as old as she was. She boarded with a family a half mile from the school and went home on weekends.
1917-18	Noah goes into the Army. Ruby knits socks for the soldiers at school, and her pupils learn to knit too, boys included. Her school is closed for several weeks in the fall of 1918 during the influenza, and she spends them at home helping her mother. Noah comes home safe the next summer.	The United States enters the war in April 1917. The Armistice ends the fighting on November 11, 1918.
1920	Votes for the first time, in the November election, at 22. She wore her good hat. She never would tell anybody who she voted for, that year or any year after. Grandpa claimed he didn't know either.	The 19th Amendment is ratified in August, and women vote for president all across the country.
1921	Marries Lewis Sarver, who farmed the next section over, in June at the church. In those days a married woman couldn't keep the school, so she gave it up. She said she cried about the school more than she did at the wedding.
1923-28	Elsie is born in 1923, David in 1925, and my mother Thelma in October 1928, all at home in the front bedroom.	Lindbergh flies alone across the Atlantic, May 1927.
1929-30	The Sarvers buy their first radio, a battery set. Grandpa listened to the markets and Gram listened to the church programs on Sunday, and in the evenings the children were allowed one program apiece.	The stock market crashes in October 1929.
1932	Patrick, the baby, is born. Corn prices are so low that some neighbors burn corn in the stove instead of coal. Gram said it smelled like popcorn and made her want to cry.	Franklin Roosevelt is elected president in November.
1934-36	The dry years. The crops burn up in 1934 and again in 1936. Dust blows in under the doors, and Gram hangs wet sheets over the windows and sets the table with the plates upside down until supper. Grasshoppers come so thick they chew the handles of Grandpa's tools. They sell most of the cattle in 1934 because there's nothing to feed them. She said they never once went hungry, because of the garden and the chickens and the cellar, and that she fed a good many men who came to the back door.	Drought and dust storms across the Great Plains. The summer of 1936 brings record heat.
1935	Hears about a plan to bring electric lines to farms. Grandpa says he'll believe it when he sees it. He had to wait thirteen years.	The Rural Electrification Administration is created.
1937	A good year, finally: rain, and a crop. Gram buys a new cookstove, the first new thing for the house since her wedding.	Nebraska's new one-house Legislature meets for the first time.
1941-45	David joins the Navy in 1942, and a blue star hangs in the front window for three years. Teachers are so scarce that the county asks Gram back, married or not, and she teaches the District 47 school again for three years, starting at 45. She writes David every single day. He comes home safe in December 1945, walks in the kitchen door, and she drops a whole pan of biscuits.	Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. The war ends in Europe in May 1945 and in the Pacific in August.
1948	The electric line reaches the farm that fall. The first night, Gram stands in the kitchen and turns the light on and off about a dozen times. Within the year she has a refrigerator, an electric iron, and a washing machine, and she said the iron alone gave her back a day a week.	Truman beats Dewey in November, which surprised the newspapers.
1950-53	Thelma marries and moves to Omaha. Gram already has three grandchildren by Elsie and David, and I come along in 1953, the fourth of what eventually comes to fourteen.	The Korean War, 1950 to 1953.
1955	Their first television. They could get one station, when the wind was right and Grandpa had been up on the roof to fiddle with the antenna. Gram liked the news and the wrestling, and she was not embarrassed about the wrestling.
1957	She and Grandpa stand in the yard at night trying to spot the Russian satellite. She said she never did see it but she saw more stars that fall than she had since she was a girl.	The Soviet Union launches Sputnik in October.
1961	Gram and Grandpa turn the farm over to Patrick and move into a little white house in town with indoor plumbing, which she called the finest invention of the century, ahead of the airplane.
1963	She is ironing when the news comes on the radio. She told me she set the iron down and didn't pick it up again until the next day.	President Kennedy is killed in Dallas, November 22.
1966	Grandpa Lewis dies in February, of his heart, at 72, in his chair after supper. They had been married 44 years. Gram lives in the little house by herself for the next twenty-five years and keeps his hat on the hook by the door the whole time.
1969	Her television quits the week before the Moon landing, so the Redmans next door lend her their little portable, and she sits up past midnight in her housecoat to watch the men walk on the Moon. She was born in a house made of dirt, she said, and she lived to see that.	Apollo 11 lands on the Moon, July 20.
1971	Her first airplane ride, at 73, from Omaha to visit Elsie in Denver. She had a window seat and didn't read her book once.
1976	Rides in the Fourth of July parade in town in a convertible, with a sign on the door that says "Ruby Sarver, Taught School in 1916." Three of her old pupils were on the curb and waved.	The nation's Bicentennial.
1981	Watches the first space shuttle go up on her own television, a color set this time. She said it went up just like the Moon rockets but came back down like an airplane, which seemed like the sensible way to do it.	The shuttle Columbia's first flight, April 1981.
1984	I buy my tape recorder. She is 86 and still drives herself to church, to the grocery store and, on Saturday nights, to pitch at the Legion hall.
1989	Gives up her driver's license at 91, on her own, without anybody having to ask. She said that was the hardest thing she'd done since 1966.	The Berlin Wall comes down in November.
1991	Moves into the care center in town at 93. Within a month she is running the Tuesday Bible study and has opinions about the food.
1994	My daughter has a baby boy, and we take a five-generation picture: Gram, Mom, me, my daughter and the baby, all in a row on the care center couch. Gram is holding the baby and looks like she's the one in charge, which she was.
1998	Her 100th birthday party, Sunday, March 15, in the basement of the church where she was married. About two hundred people, a cake shaped like a schoolhouse, and a card from the White House, which she read twice and then said was very nice of them. She stayed three hours and greeted every person by name.
1999	In the spring she starts sleeping more and saying less. In July, the last time I visited, she asked me if I'd finished writing everything down. I said almost. She said, well, get to it. She dies on Monday, August 2, in her sleep, with Mom beside her.

I've been asked how a person lives 101 years. I asked Gram that same question on tape in 1992, and she laughed and said she had never figured it out, she just kept getting up in the morning. Then she gave me a whole list of rules anyway. They're on the next page, along with the other things she used to say. Things Gram Said >> Gram, I got to it. visitors since August 12, 1999 Cindy Morrison, Omaha, Nebraska · [email protected] Last updated Saturday, September 18, 1999