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Staff writer

Age is just a number.

Millie Klapel turned 100 years old this past Sunday, Dec. 20, but she remains one of the most active members of Riverdale Church in Andover.

“Her life has been a continual unfolding of a lesson to all of us,” said Rev. Larry Hale, who has known Klapel since he came to Riverdale 25 years ago.

Naturally you are wondering what her secret is. She does not overeat, of course, but she still loves some greasy food like bacon cheeseburgers. She does not have a specific diet. She has remained active and always has a positive attitude.

Klapel does not believe it is anything she has done to remain on this earth for a century.

“If he says you stay, I’ll stay and do what I can and I told the Lord that. And if he keeps me here, he has to keep me busy,” Klapel said. “And as soon as he says come, I’m ready to go, and nobody is going to stop me.”

Klapel has been a Sunday school teacher since 1937, starting at what is now Christ’s Church in Minneapolis. She moved to Anoka in 1972 after retiring from her full-time job at Dayton’s and started teaching at the Riverdale Church. She has taught children at the nursery age level and students as old as 12 years old.

She has been a Sunday school teacher for 72 years and counting because she loves to be around children.

“I enjoy the children. I wasn’t an adult teacher at all. I can’t speak to adults,” she said laughing.

Some children may be fussy with their parents, but when they get into the nursery in the church for Sunday school, they go right to Millie, Hale said. Her nephew Ken Jensen said he always was happy to see Millie visit.

Ten years ago, Klapel was runner-up for Sunday School Teach of the Year for Assemblies of God churches, according to Hale. She has been such a good teacher because the kids respond to her, Hale said.

“She doesn’t just watch them or just teach over them,” Hale said. “She actually talks directly to them and she engages them as people and they respond to that.”

A rambunctious class can be a nightmare for a teacher. Klapel remembers an instance when there was a group of eight boys ages seven and eight who another teacher had trouble controlling. She found out that the other teacher had been coming to class late, so the boys would hide. Klapel first made a point to show up early, so the boys had nowhere to hide and could get to the lesson plans right away.

The person who taught these kids before Klapel had placed pictures on the walls. Klapel took down the pictures and commented how terrible the walls looked with the peeling paint. The boys agreed that the walls should be re-painted, but thought their dads could take care of this.

Klapel had another thought. She and the boys worked side-by-side to paint the walls. When they were done, they thought they did not have enough paint on their old clothes, so they started painting each other.

“I never had a bit of trouble with those boys,” Klapel said.

Klapel has been a constant presence in the church. If a job needs to be done, Hale better give her a call. He learned his lesson after not calling her to help with a funeral service. There had been several funerals in a short span of time, so Hale wanted to give her some time off. When she found out what happened, she asked the pastor why he did not call her.

Julianne Jensen said Millie is a fun person to be around. When she was dating Ken Jensen before they wed, she was looking at a family photo album and Millie was in almost every picture.

“You feel like you have an instant friend in Millie,” Julianne Jensen said.

Even though Klapel joked that she cannot speak to adults, that is far from the case, Hale said. She is one of Riverdale Church’s prayer warriors meaning when somebody makes a prayer request, she is on a phone list that the church staff will call.

Shut-ins in nursing homes unable to make it to church also get visits from Klapel, who lives on her own.

For Klapel, her own teachers and her parents were the biggest influence on her life. She was the seventh of 13 children. Her oldest sister was born in Germany before her parents immigrated to America. She had four older sisters and two older brothers and four younger sisters and two younger brothers. Her only living sibling is Hattie Jensen, who will be 92 years old Jan. 8, 2010.

“My parents were very firm, but very loving,” she said.

Klapel grew up on a farm near the Minnesota town of Fort Ripley. She attended a one-room school house that had a little less than 20 students. During the winter, it was heated by a stove that was first fueled by wood, but in later years was converted to a coal-burning stove. She walked the mile-and-a-half to school, but once in a while during the winter, her father would get out the horses and sleigh to take the kids to school.

Television had not been invented yet, so she and her siblings found their own ways to entertain themselves. Winter was an especially fun time. They would go skiing and sledding down the hill. With there being 13 children, when they did not want to wait, they would pile on whatever they had available. They even shared the skis or rode cardboard as they plummeted down the hill. Another family favorite past time was climbing a tree near their home and singing, Klapel recalled.

When others her own age were finishing high school and going to college, Klapel was a nanny for two boys who would later become Hollywood stars. James Arness is best known for portraying Marshal Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke.” Peter Graves, who had changed his last name, has appeared in numerous movies and TV shows. He won a Golden Globe in 1971 for his role as Jim Phelps in the “Mission: Impossible” TV series, which was first aired from 1967 to 1973 and then revived from 1988 to 1990.

Peter was three years old and Jim was five years old when 17-year-old Klapel became their nanny. She watched over them for the next seven years. She found out about the job through a newspaper classified advertisement.

The job she held outside of church for most of her life was with Dayton’s in Minneapolis where she worked in the monogramming department, embroidering items, for 28 years. She started working there in 1944 after working in a parts manufacturing plant for a year during World War II.

Klapel has lived through many historic moments in her life. She cannot quite remember where she was when World War II ended, but she vividly recalled her memory of the end of World War I in 1918. She was only eight years old. The telephone rang and an operator was on the other end, officially announcing the end of the war. Millie’s father was so excited that he pounded a picture on the wall, shouting out in excitement that, “The war is over!”

She was working at Dayton’s the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963. The store closed early so everyone could go home early and watch the news.


Eric Hagen is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it