Kenick set to celebrate a century

Thursday, November 19, 2009

By KATHLEEN BAGLIO HUMPHREYS

Correspondent

WILTON – Polly Kenick can tell one story after another about the past 100 years because she has lived them all.

The active, independent and sharp-witted Kenick will become a centenarian on Nov. 26, an honor she and her family have been looking forward to for a long time.

An open house celebrating her life and her 100th birthday will be held Sunday, Nov. 22, from 1-4 p.m. at the VFW Hall in Milford where family, friends and the public are welcome to help her celebrate the milestone and view a timeline her family has created illustrating Kenick’s past 100 years and the changes she has seen. Because of the rash of H1N1 flu cases this year, the family is asking people who have had any flu symptoms in the previous 72 hours to not attend.

Born Pauline Luellen Fifield on Nov. 26, 1909, in Hudson, Kenick was raised in Nashua. Her memories of grade school years were consumed by World War I and the sacrifices that went along with it.

She graduated from Exeter Hospital Nursing School in 1933 and raised a family in Exeter. She and her late husband, Joe, then split their time between Gilmanton and Florida but spent more than 20 years living all or part of the year in Lyndeborough before she needed to move to Edgewater Estates in Wilton, where she has lived since 2000.

The grade school she attended in Nashua was on North Common, near what was to become Holman Stadium. “We would search for lost baseballs and use the yarn from the baseballs to knit sweaters and scarves for our rag dolls. The dolls were made out of black stockings,” said Kenick.

“My mother taught me to crochet. I entered first grade in 1916 and learned to knit in school. We made little squares, not all of them were good square though, but the teachers sewed them together and sent afghans to the Red Cross for the soldiers. We knitted until Armistice Day, November 11, 1918,” recalled Kenick.

“We were very poor and I didn’t have knitting needles so my father made me knitting needles out of old nails by filing down the points,” she added.

To this day, Kenick still knits for soldiers, sending caps to U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan to wear under their helmets.

“She inspires me. I love her enthusiasm for life and her giving spirit. And I love the fact that even though she says the things she makes and gives are small, to me, they are even more precious because they come straight from her heart,” said Lyndeborough resident and friend Nadine Preftakes. “I love her laughter and her spirit.”

Nursing school and knitting were big influences on her life, both professionally and personally, and both served as an extension of her unending philosophy of giving to others.

“Nursing gave mom her focus, discipline, and she was doing something for people who needed something done, that is what she does,” said her daughter, Lois Kenick of Lyndeborough.

Polly Kenick’s compassion and sense of giving have always been strong, from making afghans for soldiers as a third-grader to crocheting her annual gift of “book worms” for the fourth-graders at Lyndeborough Central School this year.

Some of her other charitable projects include knitting tiny sweaters and bonnets for preemies at the Elliot Hospital, cross-stitching crosses to be sent with cards of comfort to those needing support, knitting dishtowels for neighbors in her building and for the Lyndeborough Auxiliary to sell as a fundraiser at the Apple Festival, making 50 gift bags every Christmas for Meals on Wheels to deliver, cooking and baking for her church or just dropping over a pie for a neighbor in need.

Then there’s her devotion to the town of Lyndeborough, where she worked for years on the Lyndeborough Improvement Society to provide services and things the town needed.

“I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing something for someone and I was always one to step in and help,” she said. “I was a very self confident kid and I was regimented at home and my mother kept a tight string on us, had to with four girls to raise, and two not her own children, quite a responsibility she bore.”

Her dad was only home on weekends as he traveled with the railroad, and her one regret is not knowing her father better.

“According to mom, her mother always told her ‘you had to have a plan, even if you never finished it’,” said Lois Kenick. “Mom is never without something to do and she is never without a plan and right now she has several things in her work basket that will happen, such as the ‘book worms’ for grade four and something special for kids who got book worms for last year. My mother learned that from her mother.”

Despite being college material, Polly Kenick came of age during the Great Depression and her family could not afford to send her to college, so she worked a year after high school as a secretary to save money, then entered Exeter Hospital Nursing School.

After a four-month probation, nursing students earned a stipend while attending Exeter, which helped the independent young adult to finish her education. “Until my stipend came through, my father used to send me letters about every week and enclosed a two-dollar bill, which was really great in those days (the early 1930s) and you could squeak by on that type of money, so when I got my stipend I knew how to live on a shoe-string budget,” she said.

“Nursing school was some of the best years of my life,” reflected Kenick, who still keeps in touch with the last two remaining survivors from the classes of 1933 and 1934.

Hospitals like Exeter didn’t see a lot of pediatrics or infectious diseases, so it had an affiliation program and nursing students did a three-month stints at Balch Hospital in Manchester for pediatrics, Boston City Hospital for contagious diseases and the N.H. State Hospital for psychiatrics. If a student missed any part of their education, they could graduate with the class, but would not get their “nursing cap” until all their missed days or courses were made up.

Kenick took a lot of pride in her nursing cap, cape and her nursing pins, which she donated for permanent display at the Exeter Hospital History wall.

She married Joe Kenick in 1934, a marriage that lasted close to 52 years, and had three children: Joseph, Lois and Ann.

“The most special things in life were my wedding day and birth of my three children and that is as special as you can get. I got three wonderful children” said Kenick. She also has three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Her marriage, only one year out of nursing school, changed Kenick’s career path because in those days married women could not work full-time in nursing; she did manage to remain active in nursing until the 1960s at various jobs at Exeter Hospital, Philips Exeter Academy’s Lamont Infirmary, Rockingham County Home and Hospital and as a district nurse who made home visits.

Even on the brink of 100, Kenick remains active. Besides her crafts and community work, she travels frequently, especially with her daughter, Lois, but now that age is becoming a factor those trips are scaled back to what they call “trinket tours” – short trips to interesting places, mostly historical places – where they soak up as much history and information as possible.

The next trip on their “to do list” is visiting Eleanor Roosevelt’s home in New York, a woman that they have a lot of admiration for.

One thing Kenick is especially proud of is that she kept her husband’s family in Poland connected with their American family by writing letters to a cousin and after the fall of the Iron Curtain 20 years ago, the families were able to reunite and are still in touch today.

In September 2008, Kenick was the recipient of Wilton’s Boston Post Cane, which is presented to the eldest resident by the Board of Selectmen.

In 1909, Edwin Grozier, publisher of The Boston Post newspaper, had an advertising idea and gave an ebony, gold-headed cane to 700 New England towns to honor their eldest citizen, starting a tradition that’s still going a century later – just like Polly Kenick.