Staff Report

The Wauneta Breeze

One of Wauneta’s most amazing  of ladies, Leona Paustian, continues to inspire awe.

Up until eight weeks ago Leona, who is now 100, continued to live alone in her charming, tidy house in west Wauneta. She tended her own yard and drove herself downtown to the grocery store on a regular basis. 

This spring, plans were in the works for a large family celebration in honor of Leona’s 100th birthday. She was born May 4, 1909, in rural Dundy County, one of five children born to Frank and Carrie (Nuding) Buffington.  Days before Leona’s big event — planned for May 2 at the Wauneta Senior Center — she suffered several broken bones in a fall at her home. She was alone at the time and said with the help of God she was able to slowly crawl to the phone to summon help.

Badly injured, she was first taken to Chase County Community Hospital in Imperial and from there transported to North Platte. While medical personnel helped get her started on the road to recovery, her family arrived from around the country in anticipation of celebrating her 100th birthday.

They were disappointed with the turn of events and so was Leona.

She has made progress since her accident and is now continuing her recovery at Heritage of Wauneta.

“It’s a new experience for me,” said Leona, noting earlier this week that she is used to being independent and taking care of herself. “If I can just get stronger and get well maybe I can go home.”

Among the many family members who made the trip to Wauneta to celebrate Leona’s special day with her were the Miller cousins — Ed Miller of Colorado, Ila (Miller) Gilbert of California and Rita (Miller) Manlove of Arizona.

Rita shared these thoughts of Leona with her grandchildren through her online journal “Grandma Rita’s Ramblings,” making them available to Breeze readers as well.

Rita’s Nebraska Nostalgia

My niece wrote a response when I announced that I would be attending a party for a lady, a distant cousin of mine, celebrating 100 years of life. It was a valid question! She asked, What does one do at a 100th Birthday Party? That is a good question that I will attempt to answer.

Before I tell you all about it I want to explain to you who the honored guest was. Her name is Leona Paustian and she lives in Wauneta, Nebraska, a small prairie town in southwest Nebraska. She has a nice home there, mows her sizeable lawn, keeps her Buick in good shape, (washing and cleaning it) and drives it in the area when the occasion arises that she needs to. Otherwise, if it’s a trip downtown and a good day she might walk!

Leona has very firm convictions and believes in speaking up and expressing them when it seems necessary to do so. 

Leona writes with beautiful handwriting, her letters are long and newsy. She always gives thanks to the Lord for all her blessings. She has outlived three husbands! 

It was in one of those letters that I received from her that she mentioned that on May 4, 2009, she would reach her 100th Birthday! This was a surprise to me and I soon got on the phone to sister Ila in California. 

After discussing the letter we agreed that this was a big event and it would sure be fun to be a part of it. 

Ila is always ready to go back to our home town. In fact she still takes the “Wauneta Breeze” just to keep up on people and what they are doing. She especially enjoys the “40 Years Ago” column. 

Anyway, she said she was quite sure that brother Ed in the Denver area would like to go. Well, from there things developed fast as she found some fabulous airline tickets to Denver that we just “couldn’t pass up.”

Ed said he would drive his car to Wauneta so things just seemed to make sense that we should make this trip to our home town where we grew up, and help Leona celebrate her birthday. We found out that her daughter Joan, was planning a big party at the Senior Center in Wauneta and that everyone that knew Leona was invited.

We arrived Saturday afternoon and here is where plans took an unexpected turn. We were told that Leona had fallen just two days before the party and broke her hip, injured her shoulder and was in the hospital. They said they decided to go ahead with the party as everything had been purchased and so many had been invited. 

Joan’s daughter is a professional party planner. Thanks to her expertise the room was so beautiful I can’t describe it. If I did try it just wouldn’t do it justice. 

Best of all there were hundreds of pictures we could look through. Each one told stories of the past. Since we were distantly related we were able to identify many.

The most interesting album was one that had several pictures of my brother Dale, that died when he was eight months old. Leona says that she helped my mom at the time of his death. He died with some kind of stomach disorder which I’m sure would not have been fatal in our day.

Even though we didn’t see Leona that day we did see many old friends, neighbors of my Grandma Miller, and people from our high school classes. That night we were invited to the delightful meal that only Nebraska cooks can come up with.

However, we all had to admit that we were disappointed that we hadn’t seen the honored birthday girl that we came to see. Leona had been taken to the North Platte hospital, some 100 miles away where the doctors could more adequately care for her. 

We decided that even though it was a long way we were going to see Leona before we left. It was a good decision! Early the next morning we were on our way.

We didn’t know whether Leona would be able to see us or talk to us but when we went in to her room, our concerns vanished. 

This spunky lady was so wide awake in her hospital bed and so alert and happy to see us. For over an hour we talked, took pictures, remembered old times and enjoyed her usual sense of humor cracking jokes about her age and her fall etc. What a special time we had together. In fact, for us it was probably more quality time spent with her than if we had seen her at the party. — by Rita Manlove

Memories of Wauneta play large role in online journal

Manlove’s blog, written for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, contains many reflections on growing up on the farm in southwest Nebraska in the 1930s and 40s.

Periodically this summer, the Breeze will include her blog posts relating to Wauneta. This week her reminiscences of the family home south of Wauneta is included as a guest column on page 4.