Eating a banana and donut every day also helps, mainly because, she said, “That’s what I like.”
Keck, born Vera Hogan on Nov. 17, 1919 in Hamilton, said she felt pretty spry for 105. She admitted she has her “wobbly” days, but has remained active at the Westover Retirement Community, where she has lived since she was 97. That rather active social calendar requires family members to consult her before they visit, said son-in-law James Mayer with a smile. Chair volleyball twice a week and walking laps in the Stahlheber Road facility are among her regular activities.
Keck grew up on New London Road, about a mile from where Badin High School stands today. She still owns the home she had lived in since she was 2 years old, though she has rented it out since moving into Westover. She has been a member of St. Joseph Catholic Church since 1955 when her kids started school ― she has four, William Keck, Linda McGrath, Joanne Roesch and Marian Mayer. Before St. Joe’s, she attended St. Mary Catholic Church.
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Keck has lived through the Great Depression, World Warr II and several other wars, 9/11, the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her fondest memories are with family. Her parents Dan and Elsie Hogan were very influential, as was her Aunt Thelma, her mom’s sister. Aunt Thelma was the one, she recalled, encouraging her to talk with a 17-year-old busboy at Milder’s Inn in Fairfield. It took several years of dating, but she married that busboy, Clarence Keck, in 1942. She and Clarence were married for 43 years until his death in 1985.
Beyond family and her Catholic faith, which are the biggest influences in her life, she said one of her fondest memories was when she started school in the one-room schoolhouse in Hanover Twp. They thought she was a genius.
“I fooled everybody,” she said.
Her older brother Ray and their mom would go over his homework with him. She paid attention. She couldn’t read at the time, but she retained a lot of that information.
“I would hear what he was studying,” she said.
She said she was fortunate to grow up on a farm during the Great Depression, because it was difficult to watch people standing in line for food.
A scary time in her life happened in high school. Keck was a 1937 graduate of Notre Dame High School on South Second Street, which was the then all-female Catholic high school in the city. It was also around the time of Hamilton’s infamous “Little Chicago” history. Though she wasn’t clear on exactly when it happened, she does vividly recall “shots being fired across the street (from the high school). It kind of got out of hand. For a while, it was scary.”
Later in life, she worked at the Estate Stove Company in Hamilton, earning a little more than $5 an hour before leaving to help her husband Clarence run Hogan Electric.
Her birthday celebration this year may be a little low key, at least compared to her 102nd celebration when she rode a horse, with her rather large family ― among her four children, Keck has nine grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
Westover celebrated Vera Keck’s birthday on Sunday at the facility’s Cullen Hall. With all the attention she has been receiving this year, it has made her feel very special: “They’re making me feel like I’m a celebrity.”
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