Fran Gilliland happily remains a "small-town girl" after 100 years

Fran (Ruzicka) Gilliland lived the first 20-plus years of her life in Plainview, a town with a population of just over 1,300 that is "tucked" into the northeast corner of Nebraska between South Dakota and Iowa. Fran, a tiny woman with a huge personality, now lives in Haxtun, a small town that is "tucked" into the northeast corner of Colorado between Wyoming and Nebraska. She said she started life as a small-town girl and is happy to say she remains one although at times during the interim of her 100-plus years, she traveled to many cities, lived for a time in a few and visited other parts of the world. Despite all of that, Fran insists her life has been "pretty normal."

Fran was born in the Plainview hospital on Sept. 8, 1921. She points out that this coming September, "If I'm still here, I'll be 101." She added that she never dreamed she would live to be 100. "You never think about how long you will live when you're a kid."

Her first memory recalls when she was about three and one-half years old and her parents, Joseph and Ethel (Allen) Ruzicka, hired a photographer to come to the house to take pictures of her and her brother Robert "Bob" Ruzicka, who was about eight years old at the time. She remembers the photographer setting up a bunch of chairs in the family's living room. "He sat us in those chairs the way he wanted us to be and took several pictures." She still has one of the resulting photographs of herself.

Bob took after their mother, a blonde with blue eyes. "And then I came along with black hair, brown eyes and darker skin like my dad," said Fran.

Because of the Great Depression of the 1920s and '30s, Bob headed for California after he graduated from high school. "There wasn't any work and it was hard, hard times," said Fran. "So he went to Los Angeles and found work." She said he married there, had children and remained there until he retired. He and his wife then moved to Arizona to get out of living in the city. He lived in Arizona until his death at age 92 or 93.

The Depression brought hard times for her entire family. Fran's parents both graduated from the University of Nebraska. "My mother was educated to teach, but she fell in love and got married instead of teaching school. No women worked in those days." Her dad became a dentist, but he was not rich, said Fran. "If you needed a tooth pulled, it cost a dollar. If you needed a filling, he charged a dollar and a half. That's how rich a dentist was."

During those hard times, people rarely wasted anything, said Fran. "You didn't waste a crumb of bread. You didn't waste anything." She said it makes her sad to see the food and clothes that are thrown away today. "We made something out of everything. If there was any food worth eating after the family finished, I fed it to my kitty. She lived on leftovers. We never spent money on cat food. She ate what we didn't eat. She ate the bones of a chicken or beef or pork and she lived for a long time."

Fran remembers that she and her cousins passed clothes from the older girls to the younger girls. "We passed clothes and overshoes and coats. We passed things down from neighbor to neighbor and cousin to cousin." She said that if the electric bill increased to more than $5 per month, her dad would tell them that they had to cut that down because five dollars was a lot of money. "Eggs were 10 cents a dozen and butter was 10 or 12 cents a pound. Nobody had any money and there was no give-away from the government. If you didn't have any money, you had to go out and make it someway."

She said in the cities, you would often see men on the streets selling apples for 10 cents each. "The cities were terrible. Little towns were bad enough, but they weren't near as bad as the cities. You don't know what hard times are until you go through them."

Besides the poor economy, blowing dust caused from drought, made life even harder for some. "At least where we lived the dust was not as bad as it was north of us about 50 miles into South Dakota," said Fran. "The dust was terrible there."

What did hit the Plainview area farmers hard were the grasshoppers. "They came by the thousands. They would land on a farm and leave nothing. The grasshoppers would eat it all."

Despite the Depression, the dust and the grasshoppers, Fran still calls her "growing up" years "the Good Old Days." She said they didn't get a radio until she was 10 years old and television didn't come until after the war so there wasn't much entertainment for kids. "We played cards. We played games. We went outside and parents didn't have to worry about their kids. We played all over the neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody's kids and when the whistle blew, each kid went home. They knew it was six o'clock and time for supper." She said little towns were like one big family. "Those little towns were just wonderful to grow up in."

Fran attended both elementary and high school in Plainview. She graduated from Plainview High School in 1939 then received a scholarship to Doane University in Crete, Neb., where she studied vocal music and English with plans to teach.

Keith and Fran met while both attending Doane. Keith, who was a year ahead of Fran, attended on an athletic scholarship with an emphasis in basketball and track. "He asked me to play bridge," she said to explain how they met. "Everybody was playing bridge. That was the game of the time. So, he asked me if I played. When I said yes, he said 'would you like to be my partner?' I said OK and that's how we met. Then he asked me to go to the movies and one thing led to another and then the war came."

Keith put his education and his plans to marry Fran on hold in the winter of 1942 when he join the United States Navy with the idea of becoming a fighter pilot. He then spent a year in Pensacola, Fla., where he earned his wings and a commission. Fran flew to Florida a month before Keith received his commission and stayed with a Navy Chaplin and his wife until the wedding. The Chaplin performed the wedding ceremony on Feb. 16, 1943 in a small chapel on the Pensacola Navy Base. "We had to wait until he became an officer before we could get married," said Fran. "The Navy only wanted single men to train as fighter pilots. So, in the morning he became an ensign and that night we got married."

After the wedding, she and Keith purchased a 1934 Ford Coupe for $150. "We drove that thing to Chicago. That was the next place he was stationed." Keith became a pilot the day he and Fran married, but then he began advanced training. "Chicago is where he learned to land on a ship," said Fran. "They put an old ship out there on Lake Michigan and that's where the first students learned to land on water."

Keith's advanced training took he and Fran from place to place over the next nine months. Those places included, Miami, Illinois, Seattle and the deserts of California. He learned to fly at night in California and qualified as a fighter pilot aboard a carrier on Lake Michigan. Fran said Keith learned quickly enough that he was soon able to take a 30-day leave. "We went to Nebraska to see my parents and then to South Dakota to visit Keith's parents. While we were in South Dakota, Keith's dad found a decent car for us to buy and we traded that old coupe in for an Oldsmobile." She said they drove the Oldsmobile to San Diego, Calif., where they stayed long enough to get their permanent residence. They then drove to Seattle, Wash., where Keith joined Fighter Pilot Squadron (VC) 41, which he remained a member of for the rest of the war. "And, of course I was with him all of the time," said Fran. "He was a married man and he wanted me with him."

When Keith went overseas with his squadron Fran went back to Plainview and taught school during the war years. "I taught wherever they needed me," she said. Although Fran trained to teach music, "When the men were called to the Army, I taught a lot of different subjects, including the history and geography of Nebraska. I had to learn those subjects the same as my students." She also taught agriculture at one time.

Keith went overseas in March of 1943. When he came back, his Squadron reformed, but again as VC 41. The squadron then went up and down the west coast from Washington to California, but now Fran went with him. Keith remained in the Navy until November of 1945. He received an "Air Medal" for bravery in action from the United States Congress and a Special Citation for leading flights in the Pacific. He left the Navy as a full Lieutenant, which is the equivalent of a Captain in the Army or the Marines.

After the war, Keith finished college in Springfield, Mass., the National YMCA University, in two years and then became a high school coach in Lauer, which was another small town in northeast Nebraska. Fran said basketball was Keith's passion and many of the teams he coached earned State Championships.

Fran stopped teaching after the war to stay home and raise her daughters, Marsha, born Oct. 18, 1947 and Cindy, born Aug. 14, 1949. The family, which then consisted of Keith, Fran and their two daughters, Marsha and Cindy, stayed in Nebraska until Keith purchased the Haxtun Community Bank in Haxtun in 1964. Both girls finished high school in Haxtun. Marsha graduated from Haxtun High School in 1966 and Cindy in 1967.

After they moved to Haxtun, Fran went back to work off and on in Haxtun and Holyoke. Then, when Marsha and Cindy started college, they needed more money so Fran went back to teaching vocal music fulltime in Holyoke. In addition to teaching music, Fran sang in the Haxtun United Methodist Church choir. She remains a member of the Methodist Church, but no longer sings in the choir.

Keith owned the bank for about 12 years, said Fran. He then sold it to a man from Denver who then sold it to Lloyd Nelson and a group of investors. Nelson sold the bank to a Nebraska group out of Chappell in 2003. The bank's name changed to Points West Community Bank in April of 2008.

After Keith retired, he and Fran traveled to many different places either on cruise ships or driving with tour groups. "That was fun," said Fran. "We went on tours to World Fairs with groups of people." They also went to South and Central America. She said in Central America they went across that country via the Panama Canal. "You can go from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean by boat." She said they liked it so much that they decided to do it again but that time they went from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. "It was more fun to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific because they open the gates and you are lifted higher and higher until you get to the Pacific." She said they open the gates and the water takes the whole ship up a little ways then when it gets to that level, you go a little ways further and then they let out more water and it lifts you up a little higher. She said you can watch it happening and the scenery is beautiful. "It took a lot of water to lift that ship up even a little bit," said Fran, adding that it was necessary to lift the ship because the Pacific Ocean is higher than the Atlantic Ocean.

She said they went the other way, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, a few years later, starting in California, "but that way is not as pretty and thrilling as the other way," she said.

Fran said they also took many tours with travel companies, traveling to Germany, Czechoslovakia and France in Central Europe, then later to England, Scotland and Ireland. She said that part of Europe is beautiful country as well, especially Scotland. "I wished we could have stayed longer in Scotland."

In addition to traveling, they also spent time in California, where they had another home near San Francisco, and in Arkansas, where they also had a home. "We were in Arkansas both winter and summer, but oh, the ice in Arkansas in the winter ... you have never seen ice until you go there." She said they stayed a few months in those places, mostly to get away from winters here.

The trip that stands out in her mind as special, however, took them to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii where they saw the damage caused by the Dec. 7, 1941 attack by the Japanese. "We went on the 50th anniversary of the attack. On one tour in a small boat we were on water that was so clear you could see the ship under you that the Japanese bombed." She said she cried and cried thinking of all the young Navy men who were down there in that boat. She said that while they managed to get some bodies out, they had to leave many of the 1,000 men who died that day in the ship. She said officials constructed a memorial near the ship that lists every man who died. "That is where they are buried. So, you can't help but cry when you look down there and think about the teenage and 20-year-old boys who gave their lives and are buried down there in that ship." She said just talking about it makes her heart feel sad.

Fran said she and Keith enjoyed their retirement doing a lot of things, including a trip to Guam, where daughter Cindy and husband Woody were living, and they met a lot of people that she kept in touch with for a time. She has outlived many of them.

Keith passed away on March 6, 1999. Fran and Keith celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary shortly before his death. "Today most people don't even bother to get married," said Fran. "In the future 50th wedding anniversaries will be a thing of the past."

Fran made a few trips after Keith died, including a visit to the Amish in Iowa, whom she said are wonderful people and awesome cooks. "They have big farms and the group I was with went out to one of those farms and had fried chicken and roast beef, pies and cakes and homemade breads. There was so much to eat that you just couldn't believe it." She said the Amish women also make blankets and other things besides foods. "All hand made, just beautiful things." She recalled purchasing cookies to enjoy on the remainder of the tour. She also took a tour to Glenwood Springs and once went to the mountains and rode the ski lifts to see the country. "I only took a few trips without Keith," she said. "It was enjoyable, but not as much."

Daughter Cindy and husband Woody Johnson recently moved back to Haxtun from Guam where Cindy worked as a Registered Nurse and Woody had a dental practice for over 30 years. They currently live with Fran.

Cindy and Woody's eldest daughter Christine "Kris," is 45. She graduated from Viola University in California and now works as a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines. She and husband, Steve Zeller, also own and operate their own business. Eric, the couple's second child is 43. He graduated from Letoureau University in Texas and works with computers. Eric and his wife Christine have two children, Josia, 5, and Esther, 2. Cindy and Woody's youngest son Daniel is 39. He graduated from the University of Las Vegas in Nevada and is a software developer. He and wife Jennifer have three children, Evelyn "Evie", 4, and twins Myles and Elian, 18 months.

All of Fran's grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in the Denver area so she sees them often. She points out, though, that she had to wait until she was in her 90s before her grandchildren gave her a great-grandchild. "That's how slow my kids were in having children," she said. She now has five great-grandchildren. Many of Fran's comments are followed by laughter to indicate her ever-present sense of humor.

Marsha, who lives in Colorado Springs, was married to Craig Garrett, but is now divorced. Marsha and Craig's eldest daughter, Rachel Garrett, was born in 1977 and will be 45 this year. She earned a master's degree in environmental policy with an emphasis on water. She works for an engineering company that works with wastewater recycling. Her job encourages environmentally sound policies. Rachel goes by her maiden name, Garrett. She and husband Justin DeWolf have a daughter, Nila DeWolf, who turns six in March. Their son Asher DeWolf turns two this coming May.

Marsha and Craig's second daughter, Samantha Garrett, will be 41 in October. She had husband Mason France, have one son, Oberon Wendell Garrett, who turned one in January. His first name is after a character in the play, "A Mid Summer's Night Dream." His middle name honors Wendell Berry, an environmental poet.

Fran goes to Denver every eight weeks to receive shots for her macular degeneration and that gives Cindy's daughters the opportunity to see her so she can see her great-grandchildren.

Since she has problems with the sight in one eye and reading is difficult, Fran listens to books, but music remains her passion although singing is more difficult these days. "I now sing in the shower." She said she was never a pianist, but she did accompany other singers.

Music has changed a lot in the past 100 years, said Fran. "You used to have orchestras that you could dance to all night, now it's guitars and western music. And that is not my passion." One of her favorite bandleaders was Glen Miller of Fort Morgan who died in World War II. She has a lot of recordings of the music she loves, but because of changing technology, she is not always able to play them. Still, living 100 years has not diminished Fran's passion for music.