The William Wach Family in 1938. Standing in back from left, Coletta, Naomi, Harold, Ralph, Helena and Dorean. Seated in from from left, Vernon, Emilie and William. Helena was the second oldest of seven children.

    By Emily Hoffman
    The Wauneta Breeze
    
     Helena Hubbard is sitting in an easy chair by a window in her room at Heritage of Wauneta, listening to a book on tape. A smile rests on her face.
     Days move slowly now, much slower than her younger years when she danced, laughed, cooked and loved. Helena Hubbard has enjoyed life, as 90 years passed by. She's lost her eyesight, and her beloved husband, Sam. But none of that dims her sense of humor, her joy in life, or her love of family.
     As a child, Helena Hubbard grew up with no family car for years, no telephone, no electricity, no running water-her family didn't even have indoor plumbing. She and her brothers and sisters grew up with no TV, no air conditioning, furnace or radio. "But we all managed to stay alive somehow," says Helena.
     Helena, the granddaughter of Russian immigrants, lived most of her life in Hayes County. Her grandparents, Friedrich and Maragaretha Wach, and their nine children boarded a ship from Russia around 1886. Her father was still a baby at the time.
     The family, originally from Germany, had fled to Russia earlier, then decided to leave Russia for America.
     Helena remembers her grandmother telling her the ship that carried her grandparents and their children to America, also carried the Statue of Liberty.
     After stopping in Sutton, Nebr., and sharecropping for a year, her grandfather heard about free land from the government in Hayes County if he lived on it and took care of it for a period of time.
    
    Family life
     The second of seven children, Helena started her life in a four room home, delivered by a doctor who came to her parents' house.
     The doctor wrote on the birth certificate her birth date as January 6, 1915, but her parents told her she was actually born on January 5. "I decided that the doctor was very senile or else the stork dropped me off at the wrong place," says Helena.
     The first house she lived in, she remembers, had a kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom. There was also a long room above the dining room that wasn't finished where she and Naomi, her older sister, eventually slept.
     The kitchen had a huge cook stove with six lids that burned cobs. One side of it held a water reservoir which held eight to 10 gallons of water, nice for wintertime baths, recalls Helena.
     They got baths once a week since they had a limited amount of water they couldn't bathe whenever they wanted.
     Every Saturday night the family would take a bath, starting with the youngest. The entire family would use the same water. If it got too cold, they could add a bit of hot water from the stove.
     "Dad got the last bath," says Helena.
     She remembers being young and hearing her mother sing as she worked around the house, but by the time Helena had three brothers, the singing stopped. Helena said after the boys came along, her mother had to carry a strap over her shoulder to keep the boys in line, and that probably took the song out of her.
     Helena was a farm girl. Her parents raised corn and wheat and sold that for income. The family also had a dairy cow and "all the milk and butter we wanted." Helena remembers the days when she and her sister took their tin cups outside to where their dad was milking. He'd direct milk into their cups, and they'd get warm milk mustaches.
     The Wach family also had a stallion that the neighbors would use breed their mares.
     "Everyone helped each other so there were no stud fees," says Helena. "Nobody worked for money then."
     "It was a happy life," says Helena of her growing up years. "My mom and dad worked well together."
     Much of the food they ate they raised, but her parents purchased beans and coffee from Sears Roebuck. She and Naomi had the job of grinding the coffee beans.
    
    School days
     Helena started school a year early because she and Naomi couldn't bear to be apart. They did everything together, and were good friends as children, so when Naomi started school, they both cried. Naomi wanted Helena with her.
     Their dad asked the teacher if she'd take Helena in school, as well as Naomi, and she agreed.
     "She made a me a little bed of some kind on the bench in the back of the room, and I took my nap every day," says Helena.
     The next year she had to go to school, so the naps stopped. She attended High Ridge School then later White Eagle School.
     She remembers the days during her teen years when the dust was so thick, it turned the sky black, just as if it were night outside.
     The first dust storm they didn't know what was going on, so they took refuge in the cellar.
     "It was dark everywhere," says Helena.
     Later, they knew when it was coming, and stuffed the doors and windows with towels
     Helena went to high school in Hamlet. She and Naomi would stay in Hamlet during the week for school, so they didn't have to make the long trip back and forth every day.
     High school classes were held in the school that used to stand next to the Hamlet Union Church. Her parents wanted all their children to finish high school, and according to Helena, they all did.
     Her mother had gone to school through sixth grade, and her father through fourth. He could only go to school when the chores were done.
     By the time she was halfway through her junior year, all of the other students in her grade had quit school to work. When she was a senior, she got to drive her parents car into school; her folks were at home without a car.
     When Helena was a senior in high school, with only one month to go before graduation, her parents had another baby, Coletta.
     Helena had two scholarships to go to college, but she didn't use either one because her folks had a new baby and needed her at home.
    
    Marriage and beyond
     For $5 a month, Helena worked at home taking care of Coletta, and helping with other chores.
     Coletta, 17 years younger than Helena, spent so much time with her older sister that when Helena married, her little sister didn't know if she wanted to stay with her parents or live with Helena.
     Helena met her husband, Sam Hubbard, when he came to work on the family farm shucking corn.
     "Sam had the ugliest red hair I had every seen," says Helena. "It was just standing straight up and was ugly colored. It looked terrible."
     Eventually Sam used oil to slick it down, so it looked "really nice." Helena remembers his beautiful brown eyes, and she gets quiet, sad, when she talks of how much she misses him now.
     Their first date was to a school play. They dated four years before they had enough money to get married.
     After they were married they put their money together. Helena had a dime, and Sam had a dime. Those were hard times, recalls Helena, and money was hard to come by.
     For a few years, Sam worked farm jobs, then they moved to Denver to look for work in a factory.
     They both worked. Helena finally found a job making plastic models for teeth for toy animals. When World War II broke out, the factory began making parts for gas masks instead of toy pieces.
     They were there two years when Sam got his second invitation to go to war. Helena didn't want to be left in Denver alone, so they moved back to the area and Sam began farming for his folks, then for others.
     "He never did get called up," says Helena.
     During their marriage Helena and Sam took in a young relative for two years, at the request of his mother, who was worried he was headed in the wrong direction.
     "He was 10 when we got him," recalls Helena, who said his dad showed up one day when the boy was 12, and they left together.
     After nearly 20 years of marriage, they finally were able to rent a farm. In 1956 they "really got started farming."
     Helena says they didn't have a lot of years of farming, but what they did were good.
     Sam and Helena moved into Hamlet in 1969. Sam still farmed a little, and Helena got a job as a cook in the Hamlet school kitchen.
     The second year she worked there, she became kitchen manager.
     The staff made their own menus, and did all of their own cooking. Helena did all the baking, and kept the books.
     When Hamlet and Wauneta schools combined, she continued to cook in Hamlet. When she first started to cook, people sent their kids to Hamlet from Wauneta, since that's where some of the classes in the grade school were located.
     "They were really mad in Wauneta because they had to go to Hamlet," says Helena. "Before it was over, the kids were all anxious to come to Hamlet to school because they got better food in Hamlet."
     As an adult, she and Sam loved to fish together. They loved to dance. She also crocheted, and dabbled in ceramics for several years.
     She and her sister-in-law, Anna Mae Wach, had a shop in Anna Mae's basement for about 12 years.
     "I'd make things, and paint them," says Helena.
     Sam died in 1990. Helena misses him. "We had a wonderful life together," says Helena. "I thought that when Sam died, my life was over."
     Helena, now getting her strength back at Heritage after breaking a hip in August, is determined to get back to her Hamlet home.
     She's determined to walk again. She's determined to make homemade noodles again, even though she's lost her sight to the genetic disease retinitis pigmentosa.
     Helena says she's been slowly losing her sight since she was in her 30s, but it's been in the last decade she's lost her sight entirely.
     Cooking without seeing isn't a problem for Helena. "I've been cooking for so long I don't need to see to do it," she says.
     The cold weather, losing Sam or her sight hasn't dimmed Helena's sense of humor, or the gracious smile on her face. She's ready to face the rest of her life with determination, and gratefulness.