Family members and friends kept the Holiday Resort parking lot packed Wednesday afternoon as they shuttled in and out to wish Bertha Gutsch Harrison a happy 100th birthday anniversary.
“It’s been a very big day,” Mrs. Harrison said. “I enjoyed it very much, seeing old friends and church people.”
Mrs. Harrison also had some visits from some of the approximately 1,000 Emporia State University students who had lived in her boarding house at 1114 Mechanic St. while they attended college here.
“Although she never traveled to distant lands and exotic places, the world came to her door as she was one of the first Emporians to rent her rooms to international students beginning in the ’60s,” Catherine Rickbone wrote in a biography of her grandmother.
Rickbone, whom Mrs. Harrison reared from the age of 1, was executive director of the Emporia Arts Council and moved in recent years to Oregon.
On Wednesday, Mrs. Harrison clearly had enjoyed reception and the social interaction it brought with people she had not seen for a while. Refreshments also had been a highlight of the occasion.
“The cake was so good,” Mrs. Harrison said. “I think one of my granddaughters and my niece made it.”
A granddaughter who could not attend the celebration made fist-sized cookies, shaped like sunflowers and decorated with yellow frosting on the leaves and brown frosting in the center.
Holiday Resort provided an ample layer cake to mark the occasion.
Cards and letters to Mrs. Harrison may be sent in care of Holiday Resort, 2700 W. 30th Ave., Room 203B, Emporia KS 66801.
She has difficulty hearing, but “her mind still works 100 percent,” said Sharol Cuttrell, a family friend and frequent visitor for Mrs. Harrison.
Before she moved to Holiday Resort a few years ago, Mrs. Harrison also had been a housemother for an independent non-Greek organization at ESU, which then was designated Kansas State Teachers College.
She also was a cook for Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority and the Cottage House in Council Grove, Rickbone said, and over the years also had cooked for ranch and farm hands and harvest crews.
During World War II, she sewed Army tents for Emporia Manufacturing Company, and when it closed, she went to work for J.C. Penney.
For more than 25 years, she worked in the meat department at Reeble’s North grocery store.
Rickbone said that the carillons at the First United Methodist Church, where Mrs. Harrison is a member, will be rung in honor of her 100th birthday anniversary on Monday through Friday this week.