Emma (Roth) Kaphengst

[The following is excerpted from an article by Karen Gustafson which appeared in the Kenosha News on August 24, 2003.]

SALEM - No tea, no coffee, no alcohol, no nicotine.  Keep your mind and body active.

Those are suggestions that Emma Kaphengst offers on how to live a long, healthy and productive life.  And as an active, healthy and remarkably young 96-year-old, she's a pretty good resource.

Born Emma Roth in 1906 in a farmhouse near Darien, Wis., she was one of five children.  Their parents, immigrants from Germany, spoke no English so Emma had to learn the language when she started first grade in a one-room schoolhouse. 

The family home and farm had no electricity, no indoor plumbing and no tractor.  "I was my dad's hired hand." she said, adding that she helped milk the cows morning and evening and worked in the fields with a team of horses.

She counts her blessings for being able to go to high school, an opportunity that came through the family doctor who made house calls.

"When I was in the eighth grade, he came to see if I could come to his house to help answer phones when his wife went with him on house calls." she recalled.  "I was the oldest daughter and my mother needed me, but I bless her that she let me go."

She lived with the family, helping out in the home, while attending high school in Darien.

The doctor also led her to a teaching career.

"When I was a senior, he told me I'd make a good teacher and he took me to Milwaukee where his aunt lived."

His aunt connected her with a family where she got room and board for helping with housework and child care so she could attend two years of teacher training at the Milwaukee Normal School.

Later the same family doctor took her sisters Bertha and Lena into his family and started them on their careers as well, directing Bertha into teaching and Lena into nursing.

Emma returned to Darien for her first professional job, teaching sixth- and seventh-graders.  It was a day of firsts for the Roth family.

"My sister Katherine was starting first grade.  Lena was a freshman in high school and it was my first day of teaching." she recalled.

She met her future husband when she was teaching in Salem and her sister Bertha was teaching in Silver Lake.  "He picked me up." she joked.  "One day we were walking uptown and a car stopped and asked if we wanted a ride.  So we got in and I sat with Dick and Bertha sat with Elmer.  Dick asked me for a date but I said 'Well, I'd rather go with Elmer.' "

Seven months later she and Elmer, also born in 1906, married.  But before she could marry, she had to get permission from the local school board.  She had a contract for the coming school year and in those days married women customarily did not teach, she explained.

Emma gave birth to their two children at home even though it was the custom to have children in the hospital.

"There was a lady in Salem who acted as a midwife," she said.  "We didn't have plastic to put on the bed so she spread newspapers."

In 1952, she ended her teaching career and began keeping the books for Electric Sales and Service, the family business her husband started.

Besides working together, they enjoyed traveling throughout the United States before his death in 1987.  Their travels took them to 46 of the 50 states, she said, staying in campgrounds, motels or sometimes sleeping in the car.  "My husband loved to drive," she said.

Her two children live in the area, with son Elmer, now 70, in Silver Lake and Marlene Curtis, 68, in Bristol.  Her family includes 12 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.

[Note: Emma is now 99.]