When spending an afternoon with Jean Neufeld, it may not occur to you that this vibrant lady with a sunny disposition just turned the odometer on 100 years. Her quick wit, sharp hearing, and mobility suggest someone 20 years her junior. Her memory, too, is just as sharp as ever, and with a century of experience behind her belt she has many stories to tell.
Jean loves a good party, and that’s why her children helped her celebrate not once, but three times on her big day: March 1. Each party hosted different collections of family, friends, and neighbours whom Jean has built relationships with over the years, including her friends from her home at the Niverville Credit Union Manor.
“Mom is a party girl,” says Jean’s daughter Lorna. “She got that honestly from her mother. She loves to entertain. That’s her strength. She just loves everybody coming together.”
And when Jean’s family comes together, they number more than 100 people. With eight children, 24 grandchildren, and more than 40 great-grandchildren, the Neufeld clan is a veritable army, a testament to the legacy of love she and her late husband built over the years.
Jean lost the love of her life 25 years ago, but she recalls the events of her husband’s heart failure with clarity.
“[He died] very suddenly,” says Jean. “I didn’t expect it.”
The couple met as young people, growing up in large families on neighbouring farms. The children from each family would play competitive games of baseball on one of their yards.
“We actually met in church, but I was too shy to talk to him,” Jean muses. “But when you play ball together, then it doesn’t matter.”
Jean has many vivid memories of growing up on her parents’ farm two and a half miles south of Niverville. She was a middle child of 12 children, playing beneath the trees where she and her sibling would make playhouses from whatever they could find.
“When I was five years old, I used to love to play with dolls. But we didn’t have dolls, so I made them from pillowcases and whatnot,” she says.
Growing up in the Dirty Thirties was hard, she says, and she doesn’t care to spend a lot of time reliving those years. Like most families at that time, they were very poor. There were food shortages and the large family had to subsist on the bare essentials they could grow or raise on the farm.
When the war struck, the family received food stamps to buy sugar, one of the few staples they couldn’t supply for themselves.
The oldest six siblings shared one bedroom in their two-storey home. A curtain was drawn across to separate the boys from the girls. As far as Jean can recall, not everyone had a bed, but they all had a blanket. The only other bedroom was shared by her parents and youngest six siblings. Those children slept on the floor around their parents’ feet.
“When we had nothing at all [to eat, my mom] made soup with water and little fried pieces of meat… She would make milk and flour into crumbs that were like little noodles. And that was our supper.”
The early years of Jean’s education were spent at the Carmichael School, a one-room schoolhouse two and a half miles from her family home. She walked with her siblings to school every day. In winter, when the weather made walking difficult, her father would hook up the horse-drawn sleigh and drive them.
One of her fondest memories is of a particular school picnic.
“Usually the trustees gave all of the students a quarter to spend at the picnic,” Jean recalls. “That year, it was very poor, so we only each got a nickel. Mr. Wiens brought a store to the Carmichael School… I saw this big bunch of bananas, and I hadn’t seen bananas for years. I wanted this banana… but I didn’t eat it. I just smelled it.”
Before long, she spotted a little girl with an enticing chocolate bar. Young Jean went back to the storekeeper and asked if she could trade the banana for a chocolate bar. They made the exchange, but all too soon she spotted another child with an ice cream cone.
“Oh yeah, I want ice cream,” she remembers thinking. “So I went and exchanged [the bar] for an ice cream. But then I had to eat it.”
Nearing the end of eighth grade, Jean knew that she wanted to be a teacher. She was good with children, having helped raise numerous younger siblings, including a baby brother with a cleft palette. But another part of her inspiration came from her Carmichael teacher, Mr. C.D. Toews.
“He was gentle and everybody listened to him,” says Jean. “We had respect for him. He was a Christian and he treated us like children should be treated.”
She diligently studied ninth and tenth grades by correspondence, since the local school didn’t offer them. By that time, her oldest sister Agnes had settled into a home in Winnipeg. Agnes paid the ten-dollar fee for Jean to enroll at Kelvin High School to attend Grade Eleven. She also helped Jean find room and board in the home of a Jewish couple on Wellington Crescent. In lieu of rent, Jean became nanny to the couple’s two-year-old son.
“During the day, [his mother] was home, but they went away every evening of the week except Thursday,” says Jean. “[That was] my evening, so I went to Bible school… I had to [grab] everything I could while I had money.”
But Kelvin’s education discontinued after Grade Eleven, so Jean moved on to Gretna for twelfth grade. From there, she returned to Winnipeg for her teaching education—one year of training in what was known as Normal School. She then moved on to her first employment as a teacher in Kleefeld.
Jean recalls some of the parties her mother used to plan during her later years at home.
“My mother had siblings that lived about ten miles from our house,” she says. “My mother had to have a birthday deal every [year]. We had big birthday parties… I still remember how they laughed and talked and, oh, it was just very busy.”
It was around this time that her neighbour, John Neufeld, stole her heart. But since teaching was her second love, she made it clear to him that she would work ten years as a teacher before marriage was an option. He was prepared to wait. Within four years, though, the waiting was over and the couple married and moved to a farmstead of their own in Tourond.
Jean continued to substitute teach occasionally, alongside mothering her own children and supporting her husband in farm life. Over the years, she also taught Sunday school in their home church, religious instruction at the Niverville Elementary School, and English in the evenings for the many new immigrants settling in the area.
“I don’t remember that we had a hard time ever,” daughter Lorna recalls. “I remember Mom sewing until late into the night so that she could get outfits made for us, but it didn’t dawn on us that they couldn’t afford to go and buy us all clothes.”
In spite of their meagre income, Jean and John believed in sharing what they had. A regular stream of visitors came and went from their home, the result of John’s outgoing and magnetic personality.
“The people that came were connections that Dad made, but Mom didn’t necessarily know them,” Lorna says. “So Mom would do a lot of the entertaining, and when she would get completely worn out with it all Dad would pack her up and they’d go [on a road trip]. He would make sure that she was rested.”
“Saturday was baking day,” daughter Audrey adds. “We always had fresh buns and lots of baking. She filled the freezer, and then invariably somebody would come over on Saturday afternoon and just about clean us out and poor Mom was so upset because then the next day, Sunday, she had company and had to get creative.”
As times improved, John installed a swimming pool at their home. That, too, was frequented by invited strangers on a regular basis.
Family times were special, too. The children accompanied their parents on regular trips to Steinbach. Each child would be gifted a few pennies to spend at the Five and Dime. Dad would buy bread and wieners, making for an unusually tasty treat when they got home.
Each Christmas Eve, the family tradition mandated that every child place a bowl under the tree. On Christmas morning, they’d awake to one unwrapped gift and a bowl full of candy. Birthdays were special, too, as Jean entertained the kids’ friends, serving birthday cakes with pennies baked into the batter.
As the children grew, some of Jean’s fondest memories go back to the many road trips she took with her husband in their sleeper van. There were no worries on those trips, she says.
“I think we’ve been in every state that there is in the United States,” Jean marvels.
She lost her longtime love in 1994. The farm had already been sold to two of their sons, so Jean packed up and moved to Niverville Place—and then, eventually, the Niverville Credit Union Manor on her ninety-third birthday.
Jean threw herself into landscape painting, a talent she’d had since childhood but only really invested herself in at the age of 65. Over the years, she’s gifted many of her art pieces to family and friends. The last paintings she completed were at 97 years of age. Paintings of her childhood home frame the wall of her suite. Others line the corridors beyond her doorway.
She would still be painting today if not for the macular degeneration that has stolen much of her eyesight. Her children have commemorated her artwork by creating calendars with copies of her finest pieces.
Still dedicated to her faith, Jean continues to attend Fourth Avenue Bible Church every Sunday. She’s been a member there for 83 years. As for her general overall health and longevity, Jean says she credits it all to God.
