PATRICK'S PEOPLE: Hohl, Oehme are reigning royalty

When she was crowned 2011 Little Balkans long-term care queen, Inez Oehme promised that she’d try to be a good girl.

The Via Christi Village resident said Wednesday that she had kept her word.

“I tried so hard and I have been a good girl,” Oehme said.

Melvin Hohl, a longtime friend now residing at Sunset Manor, was the 2011 long-term care king.

“I’ve been a good boy, haven’t I?” he asked.

“We’ve both been pretty good, and here we are,” Oehme replied.

She said that she is looking forward to attending the 2012 Little Balkans Senior King and Queen Contest, slated from 1 to 3 p.m. Friday at Meadowbrook Mall.

“To me it’s enjoyable,” she said. “You meet so many nice people.”

She was wearing her queen’s tiara Wednesday, and will probably wear it on Friday to the contest.
“It feels so good on my head,” she said.

Her outgoing personality was one factor in winning her tiara, and so was her skill at handwork. For her talent presentation she displayed some crocheted afghans she had made, along with purple caps she made and donated to Via Christi Hospital for a campaign to raise awareness of shaken baby syndrome.

Hohl displayed some of his latchhook rugs, but not all of them.

“I started doing latchhook around 1991 and have probably done 400 to 500 rugs,” he said. “You have to concentrate and read the instructions or you’ll mess up all the way through. I enjoy doing it. It’s not work, it’s a lot of fun.”

The two met at church around 1959. At that time, Oehme’s husband, Ernest, was alive, as was Hohl’s wife, Lois.

“We quilted once a week at church and we had dinners,” Oehme said. “Husbands came to the dinners, and I’d take my two boys, too. They’d take a nap while we washed dishes.”

Hohl occasionally helped with cooking, especially for men’s prayer breakfasts.

“The only way to make scrambled eggs taste good is to put milk and cheese in and then beat the eggs until they’re fluffy,” he said. “Put them in the skillet, and don’t let them burn.”

Oehme has cooked most of her life, including many years at Pittsburg High School.

“I made them pizza, bread, chili, anything they needed,” she said. “I see kids I fed and they still remember me and want to show me their babies. That’s so nice.”

Oehme is proud that both her sons are good cooks.

“If they wanted to mess in the kitchen, I let  them,” she said. “We had a lot of made-up recipes and they were good. And the boys always cleaned up afterward.”

She said that good cooking runs in her family.

“My grandmother, Martha Ann Hizar, was a pastry cook at the Hotel Stilwell,” Oehme said. “She could tell some stories.”

She can tell stories too, about living on a farm with her husband and sons, about painting the barn because her husband didn’t like to paint.

“There was a part on it I couldn’t reach, so Ernest put a rope around my waist and pulled me up and I painted it,” she said. “We had a big, big garden and sold vegetables to the Safeway store. I canned everything under the sun. Those were good old days. I’d go back to them if I could.”

Hohl said that his mother and father were strict because they wanted to teach him what the world was like.

“They taught me to be courteous to people and respect people,” he said. “It’s a two-way street. If you don’t respect them, they won’t respect you. If somebody does something naughty to you, say you forgive them and it’ll feel good. Life is what you make it, but nobody is going to give it to you.”