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Nearing a century

Orville Ehwegen, of Sac City, has seen the world change

-Messenger photo by Peter Kaspari Orville Ehwegen shows a carved number "99" that was given to him for his 99th birthday last year. Ehwegen, of Sac City, will turn 100 years old on Aug. 21.

SAC CITY — Orville Ehwegen used horses to cultivate the corn on his family farm when he was young.

Two years ago, Ehwegen retired from his job selling and repairing appliances out of his garage in Sac City.

He was 98 years old then.

On Aug. 21, he will turn 100.

He’s doing very well at almost a century.

-Messenger photo by Peter Kaspari Orville Ehwegen looks over the flowers in his front yard in Sac City. Ehwegen said he had chopped down an old tree years ago and now uses it as a garden. He will turn 100 years old on Aug. 21.

“I’m in good health,” he said. “I only take blood pressure pills and an aspirin. God has blessed me 100 percent. I can’t complain.”

His mobility is good, too.

“I get around pretty good, but I have to wear a brace on my back. But, naturally, that would happen when you get to my age.”

Ehwegen was born on Aug. 21, 1917. He remembers being a child.

Life growing up was “hard work” and “long hours,” he said recently.

Ehwegen went to school until he was 14. At that time, he was riding a pony eight miles to Wall Lake to attend a Lutheran school. At the end of the day he would ride that same pony the eight miles back to his family farm.

“That was back in the Depression time,” he said. “1932 to 1933.”

That’s also when his father approached him.

“He says, ‘Bud, I can’t send you to high school this year because I can’t afford a hired man.’ That was in ’33,” Ehwegen said. “‘And you have to stay home and help me with the farm.'”

His father put him to work. He learned how to drive the tractor and take care of the farm.

One of the family’s most challenging times occurred when a severe drought crippled the family farm when he was 18 or 19 years old.

It was the Fourth of July, and he and his father had just worked 10 acres of wheat.

“And as we were going to the house, Dad says, ‘Bud, there’s something bad that’s happening,'” Ehwegen recalled. “‘We got an awful hot air from the southwest.'”

That afternoon, Ehwegen laid down on the living room floor and fell asleep.

“And when I woke up I was wet from one end to the other with sweat,” he said. “Oh, it got hot. Dad told me to get the cows home. We had a mile to bring them home. He said bring them slow, because it’s awfully hot.”

His family lost its entire crop that year.

“We had nothing,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we cut all the crop with a grain binder and put it into the silo.”

Fortunately, Ehwegen was able to earn money by going around the area and chopping up all of the field crop. He put it into a pit silo and used the money to buy paint, which he used to paint the barns and buildings on the family farm.

Eventually, he left the family farm when his younger half-brother took over in 1939.

“I worked out for about a year and maybe two, and now we’re in 1941,” he said. “I got a call from Uncle Sam to work for him.”

U.S. Army

Ehwegen was inducted into the United States Army in May 1942, in the middle of World War II. He was sent to the South Pacific, first to New Zealand, then to Australia. There, he met up with the Australians and was trained in amphibious landings. He was part of the Amphibious Engineers, 2nd Brigade.

After years of training, they prepared to enter Japan.

“We were all ready to go to make the big push into Japan proper,” he said. “Which would have been another Normandy landing like it was in Europe.”

But by then, the Japanese had surrendered and the war was over.

“We knew that and figured most of us would never make it out of there,” Ehwegen said. “So instead of going to Japan, we went to Korea where the Japanese forces were up in Manchuria. They were coming down that way to head back home, and our job was to check them to see if they had anything American on their person.”

Ehwegen came back to America and was discharged from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

From there, he moved back to Sac City, where he spent two years working for a gas station. He then started working for the Farber & Otteman furniture store.

He had many responsibilities at Farber & Otteman, including helping out at their funeral home. He was a floor mechanic and carpet layer, and eventually served as the stockman at the company’s warehouse.

“On top of that I was also an appliance service repairman and an ambulance driver, and, if they needed me, I was an assistant helping out with funerals,” Ehwegen said.

In 1959, Arlin Otteman, co-owner of Farber & Otteman, approached Ehwegen to have him look at blueprints for the store, as he was planning remodeling.

Ehwegen said when he looked at the blueprints, he noticed there was no room in the store for the appliances. He couldn’t think of what to do with all the appliances, until Otteman spoke to him.

“He says, ‘Orv, we’re not going to dump this thing. You just take it over,'” Ehwegen said. “And I said, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘You take it over.'”

Otteman then revealed to Ehwegen that there was a vacant storefront that was all ready for him.

Ehwegen said he came home that night and told his wife, Ruth, that he was going to be starting an appliance store.

“And she said, ‘What beer joint was you in?'” Ehwegen said. “I said, “I wasn’t in no beer joint. This is what happened.'”

On July 4, 1959, Orv’s Appliance Sales and Service opened its doors in Sac City, with both Orville and Ruth Ehwegen working there.

Ehwegen said his business was successful. According to an analysis he saw, his store was responsible for 95 percent of the appliance sales in Sac County.

He traveled all around the county for his business, and said his customers got to know him so well, some of them even memorized his schedule. If they needed him on a certain day, they would go to the town he was in and find him to tell him what they needed.

In 1983, after 24 years in business, Ehwegen and his wife sold their business and retired at 66 years old.

The couple bought a used motor home and went traveling and fishing.

“We traveled all over the western part of the United States,” Ehwegen said. “Then, after we got tired of that, we sold the motor home and went on trips with Northwest Tour out of Fort Dodge.”

But just eight years after Ehwegen sold the business, he found himself back working with appliances in an unusual way.

The person Ehwegen sold the business to ended up shutting down after he was unable to make it work.

After it closed, Ehwegen said his old customers started approaching him and asking if he still did service work, and he told them that he could do it.

“I was young yet,” he said. “I was about in my 80s, so I went back to Sioux City and went back to the distributor and brought all my testing equipment.”

He then started operating another appliance business out of his garage, where he both sold appliances and repaired them.

Ehwegen said he did this up until about two years ago, because it was getting harder for him to get down onto the floor anymore.

Even at nearly 100 years old, Ehwegen, who has lived alone since 2003 when Ruth died, is still active.

“I still do my garden work, yard work,” he said. “I mow a few yards for other people. I keep myself active.”

Every year on his birthday, since his 90th birthday, he’s had a breakfast at the Villager restaurant where he’s invited people to celebrate with him.

For his 100th birthday, there will be a big celebration.

It will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 19 at the Sac City VFW Hall. Ehwegen said between 150 and 200 people are expected.

What’s Ehwegen’s secret to longevity?

“Well, I think clean living and hard work when I grew up,” he said. “I worked hard and I didn’t booze around and I was fortunate that my strength was strong enough to do what I was doing.”

And there’s one other reason he believes he’s lived for so long.

“When I was in the war, I thought I would never get to come home,” he said. “But I definitely believed the Lord was with me all the way. I believe that. I talk to Him. We walk and He knows the way, and I believe that.”

He also said he loves helping people.

“You might say I was a caring person,” he said. “I enjoyed my work.”

How life has changed over a century

Orville Ehwegen, of Sac City, who is nearly 100, said life has changed in many ways since his childhood.

Probably the biggest of those changes, he said, is when the horse and buggy disappeared and cars started becoming common.

“I remember the Model T Ford, the Model A’s, the dirt roads,” he said. “And I would say when the REA came through the country with electricity out to the rural farm. That changed a lot of things in the rural areas.”

The REA was the Rural Electrification Administration.

When he was younger, all the roads were dirt and gravel.

“When I was a little boy in Sac City, the Main Street hill was a gravel road,” he said. “And the sidewalks were boards, planks. We had plank bridges.”

Horses were also used for everything back in his childhood.

“In the young days, everything was horse-power,” he said. “We used horses for all our work. And the tractor came in. Everything moved a little faster.”

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