Rita's Story
(First ten pages – rough draft)

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Chapter 9

 

Centenarian

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Rita Wells, 101​

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" Grandma Harmuth used to tell me about getting up on Sunday mornings 

and brushing the horse for Grandpa Harmuth to ride to church."

 

It should be of little surprise to anyone who knows Rita (Harmuth) Wells’ family history that she has lived to the golden age of 101. The Harmuth family is known for their long lifespans. Her grandmother, Margaret, lived to ninety-nine, and her father, Joseph, lived to 100.[1] Her mother, Lucille, lived to be eighty-nine. Longevity is encoded in the Harmuth genes.

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Do you remember your grandparents?

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Yes, I do. They were still living. My grandmother on my father's side was wonderful, and I knew her.

 

Everybody knew Grandma (Margaret) Harmuth. Actually, it’s Harmutt. But it was so much easier to say Harmuth. She was from Germany. She left there and came over here and never went back, never saw her family, and knew she wouldn’t see them again. It’s really striking. But anyway, she was just the strongest and sweetest thing. 

 

Rita has a blanket covering her legs and feet as she relaxes on her comfy couch in her comfy condo. The volume on her TV is turned up a notch (or two) louder than I’m used to.

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When I was little, my grandmother would sit around with her friends, and they’d all have a little blanket over their knees and a sweater wrapped around her, so that’s what this reminds me of.

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She lived to one hundred. We didn’t pay much attention to it. They didn’t have cards and things for one hundred-year-olds back then. Now they have a lot of cards. I have a whole bag. 

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Grandma Harmuth’s husband, my Grandpa (Joseph) Harmuth died when he was only fifty-nine, so I didn’t get to know him. The children were all growing up. They had five boys and two girls. They were always nice to people, so calm and so charming. Everybody loved them. 

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Did Margaret remarry?

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No, she built a duplex. She was fifty and a widow, and she built a house. I thought that was amazing. I think I got that from her because I like to buy homes.

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What brought Margaret here? And did she come alone, or did she bring her family?

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Grandma Harmuth was like I am. She’d go somewhere if she thought it was worth going to. She heard a lot about the States and knew that living here was very good. Then, when she got over here with her husband and three children, she had cousins who told her how good it was. They’re around, too. They’re in North Carolina, some of them. But anyway, when she came and saw Aunt Kate, who stayed in the same area of Pittsburgh, she settled in. I can remember that. 

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So that would’ve been in the late 1800’s, right?

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Mm-hmm. Grandma Harmuth used to tell me about getting up on Sunday morning and brushing the horse – brushing the horse for Grandpa Harmuth to ride to church.

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And I said, “Why didn’t he get up and brush it himself, Grandma?” Because Rita wouldn’t have done that. The women today are different, I guess. But that’s the story she told, that he rode down the hill – they lived on a hill in town – and then he’d go to church. These people used to get up and go early in the morning and take their babies and then come home and make dinner or do the wash. That was the first thing they did in the morning. I never see anybody do that now.

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So, you came along in 1923?

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Mm-hmm. I was sixteen when World War II[2] began and eighteen when they began drafting. I was there when the boys were getting their notices.

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Uh-huh. Also, it was the Depression.[3] That was a terrible time to live because you wouldn’t have spent anything you didn’t have to, and it would have been nice to have been able to do like the kids do today. There's nothing they don't do, so that's a lot different than the Depression. They had a birthday party, and she didn't have any money, and what she served was water. That's how poor the people were. And she wanted a party. So yeah, it's something you lived through that wasn't good.

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My father was a manager of the American Cyanamid Company[4] in Bridgeville,[5] Pennsylvania. It was a big chemical company from the East Coast. And his father, Grandpa Harmuth, they said was a wonderful carpenter. I never knew him. He died in 1915. I wasn’t here yet when he died.

 

My Grandfather (John) Kalis in Philadelphia – Pottstown, actually – was my mother's father. He had a big white house and four daughters and was a young widower. My mother was nine when her mother, Mary Kalis, died (in 1909). I don’t know that he talked to us much. When he came out to visit us, he sat in the backseat of the car. In Pittsburgh, we have a lot of hills around the city, and we were coming from the airport, and Grandpa couldn’t believe it. He said, “How do those houses stay up there? I don’t believe it. I can’t believe that they’re going to stay up there.

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I went to high school in a little town called Bridgeville, where we all grew up. It's part of Pittsburgh. 

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Sibs

I had three sibs – Joe Jr., Mike, and Gerre (legally, Geraldine).

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Joe was a very good tennis player. He was written up in the Pittsburgh paper, really a champ. Then he came to Florida and took every course at Carnegie Tech (Carnegie Mellon now) because my dad graduated from there as a mechanical engineer. Joe was a math wiz. He went to Connecticut, and he married a girl in Greenwich. I don't know what I was going to say. This has happened a lot since I hit my head. 

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Brother Mike

My brother Mike was born fifteen years after me. He's eighty-five now. He has three children, and they're all wonderful, and they all live in Dallas. He wanted me to come to Dallas and live with them, but I always liked Florida; I like Florida weather. I said, "Oh, I'm going to stay here." 

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And then there’s Gerre, my younger sister, who I'll talk about. My father, I’m like him. In age, she’s ninety-six!

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Working

My dad went to college; he worked his way through. He saw where he needed it. He was the only one of five brothers that did go to college. So, he wanted me to go to a nice school like Carnegie Tech because he went there. He was an engineer, a mechanical engineer. But I wanted to be in business. I didn’t want to be a schoolteacher. I didn't want to be this or that. I just wanted to get into business. I should've gone to Carnegie Tech but would've taken four years. I thought of it once, but I just had such good jobs that I never really needed them, and I had a backup: the government. But later, I regretted not going; I should have, even while working, because it would've been good to have a degree.

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So, instead, I went to Grace Martin Business School[6] (with a focus on administration), and then I went into an office. Somebody needed help; the girl I replaced went for an operation, and I stayed there for five years. She didn’t die. We became good friends. 

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I was living at home with my mother and Dad at the time. Then, I went to work at Ovaltine[7] in downtown Chicago, where my sister graduated from college. Then I moved to Florida. They came down at the same time, and we bought an apartment down here. That’s how I got here. We would go back every summer to Bridgeville, and it worked out really well. That was the hometown. It was a little hometown, you see, not very big, like one family started it. 

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My dad never got into politics; he didn’t like it, but his brother (my Uncle Charles Harmuth[8]) became a state legislator for twelve years. Dad was an engineer and he never had to go to war because of that, and he was very good at figures. In fact, when he was in college, his professor said, "You're the only one who's never had to take an exam. You don't have to take it. You've passed everything with A's."

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Oh, yeah. In Bridgeville, everybody knew our last name. It was one of those towns where Mickey Rooney used to live where everybody knew the judge. Anyhow, I went to Washington one weekend, and while I was in Washington, I sat at my girlfriend’s place. 

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She was a stewardess. So, she said, “Come over and have an interview.” So, I went over. Then I decided that I wanted to go into the airlines and fly.

When I got home, my mother said, “You’re an air hostess, an air stewardess.” I got the job. 

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Well, I couldn’t go right away, but I went about a month later and then did that for seven months. I realized the airlines didn’t have any protection. It would have been wonderful to have all that. I mean, I could have died, and I didn’t even have insurance money. I didn’t have protection for medicine or if I got pregnant. So, I better get out of here. While I was thinking that, I didn’t quit. I heard about stewardesses being put on leave for a while.

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Well, the dumb pilots, if they went back, they were foolish. But everybody liked to fly. Then, I was called by the airlines and told that they were going to do the same with us as they did with the pilots. “Goodbye, and we’ll call you back.” After so many months, we’d be called back. 

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Well, I was paying rent. I mean, I couldn’t just sit and wait for them to call me back, so I went to Chicago because my younger sister, Gerre, was going to college there, and it was nice to be near her. (Gerre eventually had five children.)  So I went to downtown Chicago, and I don’t know who the man was anymore, but he told me a good place to go for a job is to the State, not to work for, but to their employment office. 

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Well, I had to get money. So, I went down there and got my first job. I won't mention the company, but I went with a famous company and worked for the president. I stayed about two days because he was pretty fresh. In fact, I should have just quit, but I didn’t want to quit without him being there. He went away, and he sent me pearls. Isn’t that nice? I thought, “I never had anybody send me pearls before.” I was watching for him, and he did what I thought he would. 

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Then I left, and I went with the Ovaltine people, and that was okay because they gave me a lot of protection. Yeah. Well, it was on television. They had Little Orphan Annie. Anyway, I went with them and worked for them for quite a while. Then I was called back by the airlines, and I decided I couldn't afford to go because they still didn’t offer protection, no union.  

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The fellow at Ovaltine was so nice. He was in one of the suburbs outside of Chicago. I hated telling him I was leaving, but I did and returned home to Pittsburgh.

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Now, I am trying to understand why I went back. I have to think about that because I had a pretty good job at Ovaltine.

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Around that time, I had an aunt in Washington. She was single and really trying to get me to Washington. I didn't want to go to Washington, but I hated to hurt her feelings. Anyway, I said I was going to go back to Bridgeville.

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My brother Joe graduated from the University of Miami. He was a very good tennis player and a tennis pro. He went to the University of Miami as an engineer. I visited him and liked it so much. I was so impressed. That was the East Coast. Well, I decided I’d like to go back to Miami, and I said, “Would you mind if my girlfriend and I came down and stayed with you?”

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Joe said no, so we went down to Miami, and we had a very nice apartment and a car, and we could go to the beach and all that sort of stuff. He had friends, and oh, I got a job immediately with a really nice fellow. He graduated from the University of Miami and head of one of the departments. So, I worked for him long before moving back to Pittsburg. Once, he came up to Pittsburgh and came out to see me. He probably stayed at the university for the rest of his career.

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Let's see, where'd I go from there? I was in Pittsburgh, and I didn't want to work there. Yes, I was on this government job list, and they kept sending me letters every time they'd get a new position. I didn't like any of them. The taxes and all that stuff, I didn't want that. I was really picky. Anyway, I worked for the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh, which was a very nice job. I really liked it. I stayed there until there was an opening with a federal judge, and I took that.

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I worked for three federal judges. One died, and then two more judges asked me to work for them, one down here in Florida. 

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Well, anyway, that has always been the most interesting part of my career.

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What did you do for those judges?

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I was a secretary, and they changed my title while I was there. They went with “administrative assistant” because the girls didn’t like the name secretary. The businesswomen were becoming popular then and were getting all the jobs, but they didn’t want that tag. 

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It really was a nice job.

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Do you remember the judges’ names?

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Uh-huh. I do. I don't know that I should say. They’re all so private.

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They’re all passed, I would imagine, at this point, right?

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As far as I know. One of them passed while I was in the office.

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One went at fifty-seven. One of them died in the past five years. Oh, the reason I said I worked for three judges, I had one here. Washington called me and said, “We’ve never had this happen before.” They told me nobody applied for this position. “The judge is ninety-one, and he is going down to Tampa to work, and he’d liked to have you come down and work for him for the short.

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On Meeting Bill

Rita was sixteen when World War II broke out and eighteen when the draft began. The boys she had grown up with left to fight. As time passed, the opportunities for marriage decreased, so she decided to pursue her career.

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Throughout the years, she dated here and there and even contemplated marriage once; despite that, Rita had created a whole and happy life: she traveled with friends, watched movies and plays together, and talked about anything under the sun. Many of her nieces looked up to her and wanted to be like “Miss Career Girl.”

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When her parents’ health declined, Rita gave up her federal judge assistant job at sixty-five to take care of them full-time. Even after her parents died, leaving Rita alone again, love still found its way back into her life when she met Bill.

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She had known of his wife, who had since died, but she didn't meet Bill until their mutual friends invited them to a benefit lunch. When they left, he asked her if she played bridge; she said no, assuming he was just looking for a partner. But when Bill called her for another lunch date, she realized his interests were more than platonic. The relationship quickly took off from there.

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One night out with some friends, the subject of marriage came up, and Rita figured she wasn’t meant to wed. Then, she noticed that Bill was mouthing “I love you” across the table – and it hit her: she felt the same way. 

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Bill was an ex-Air Force Colonel[9] planning to attend a reunion while Rita was going out of state to attend a niece’s wedding. After deciding that this plan was foolish, they decided, why not get married? Bill’s comrades welcomed Rita at the reunion, and Rita’s family greeted him at the wedding. And by Sunday morning – only eight weeks after the meeting (they made it official in front of a justice of the peace).

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They were a dynamic duo, making everyone laugh with their jokes. She offered a heartfelt toast to them, and they kissed longer than the bride and groom did. It was hard to get her away from him; he kept peeking around the corner, looking for her with love in his eyes. Even though she had a demanding job as the secretary of a federal judge, she still found time to giggle with her beau. They acted like honeymooners. In a letter to her cousin Rosemary Drewes, Rita said she had to go because “I see my husband is coming, and I have to have a martini with him.” Their story seemed straight out of a fairy tale.

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Please tell me about your husband.

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Howard William Wells and he had a story, too. His name was changed.

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Oh, good. Let’s hear about that.

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Well, Howard's mother and father died when he was young. I think he was just a couple of years old. He was the youngest, and somebody in the family took each of the children. There were three boys. He went with his mother's sister and aunt, and she raised him with her older children, but they've always been good friends. I became good friends with them when I married him. The other kids came up through the Great Depression, like most of us. But he came up with a father who could give him everything, and he said he'd support him until he was out of college, which he did.

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Then Bill went into the service. Bill was a colonel in World War II, and a fighter pilot and engineer. Yeah. Eighty missions. 

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There’s a plane overhead, and it explodes. I don’t know how you process that.

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Oh no, I don’t either. It’s like me going downstairs to dinner now and people not being at the table where they were supposed to be. They were there yesterday. 

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On the last mission, as Bill was coming in, a Jap was coming right for him. The Jap was going to shoot him down, and some American fighter pilot in a biplane also landing saw the Jap, shot him down.

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Can you imagine?

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How lucky can you get?

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Can you just imagine being in the middle of that?

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Oh my.

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Yeah. After all that work, eighty missions, he shoots you down. So, he said to the fellow who shot the Jap, when he got in, he said, "No matter how much you drink, I can buy you more."

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Well, his name confused some because his birth name was William Howard. When his aunt adopted him, another William Howard, his new father, was already in the house. So, they renamed him Howard William. So, when I married him, it was Howard William, but he went by Bill, and he’s always kept that. He’s always been Bill. 

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After we had been married for five years, we bought a house in the Bayou Club Estates,[10] and that was lovely because it had its own club. We also used to go to the Yacht Club in downtown St. Pete.[11]

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Bill would go down there to play cards on Friday afternoons, and then Friday night, we’d go back down again. I said, “It’s so silly when we have a club right here.” We did buy in. We bought into the club, and we met all our neighbors. But anyway, that was lovely. We had a good time and had more friends.

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Footnotes

[1] Rita’s father, Joseph Thomas Harmuth, was born in Germany in 1891 and died in Pennsylvania in 1991. 

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[2] World War II had the world in its grip from 1939 to 1945. The Axis powers, comprising Germany, Italy, and Japan, were pitted against the Allies – the U.S., Britain, Russia, and China. The U.S.’s involvement began after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.

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[3] The Great Depression was a severe and extended economic slump that began in America in 1929 and ended with the beginning of WWII in 1939 (the manufacturing demands for war supplies is good for the economy). It was caused by the market crash of October 1929, which led to widespread panic and a rapid decrease in business activity. The Depression had severe worldwide impacts, and many countries faced high unemployment rates, poverty, and social turmoil.

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[4] Founded in 1907, the American Cyanamid Company has been a leading chemical and pharmaceutical company for over a century. They have developed and manufactured chemicals for various purposes including industrial and agricultural use, as well as pharmaceuticals for human and animal health.

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[5] Twelve miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Bridgeville is a borough home to some five thousand people. As an incorporated area since 1901, it contains a mix of residential and commercial zones.

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[6] Grace Martin’s School of Secretarial Arts opened in 1913 in Pittsburgh, educating students in administrative and clerical skills such as secretarial science, stenography, shorthand, bookkeeping, typing, and office management. Despite its eventual closure in the mid-1970s due to technological advancements, the school remains an important part of Pittsburgh’s educational history.

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[7] Ovaltine is a chocolate malt powder brand often mixed with milk and drank as a hot or cold beverage. Developed in Switzerland in 1904, it has since become popular in many countries worldwide. Ovaltine contains a blend of malt extract, cocoa powder, sugar, and other ingredients and is often marketed as a nutritious and energy-boosting drink. It can be enjoyed as a standalone beverage or an ingredient in baked goods or desserts.

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[8] (Uncle) Charles Harmuth, born in September 1892 in St. Louis, served in the 28th Division of the U.S. Army from 1917-1919 during World War I. He also served in the Pennsylvania National Guard. He was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as a Democrat to serve the 1933, 1935, 1937, and 1941 terms. He died in 1984.

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[9] Colonel is a high-ranking military title used in various countries. It is also used in certain police forces and paramilitary groups. During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, a Colonel was responsible for leading a regiment within an army.

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[10] The Bayou Club, near Tampa, is a private country club renowned for its posh facilities. Established by a collection of local businessmen in 1981, it has become a go-to destination for golfers and the wealthy. Joining the Bayou Club is invitation-only, and multiple membership levels are offered, including full golf, tennis, and social memberships. There is an expected dress code when coming to the club, and manners must be always kept while on the property.

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[11] The Tampa Yacht and Country Club is an elite, invitation-only club on the stunning South Tampa waterfront. Founded in 1904, the private club has become one of the most sought-after venues for boaters and yachters. Its marina is equipped with more than three hundred ships, and its clubhouse has several dining rooms, bars, and lounges, and special event accommodations.