- Three of Eckes’ eight children, Lucia Leck, Danny Eckes and Joan Elliott reminisce on photos of their dad while dining at his favorite restaurant, Perkins. Murphy News Service photo by Valory Schoenecker
By Valory Schoenecker/Murphy News Service
As a thriving 101-year-old, Fidelis John Eckes has proven that hard work doesn’t kill you.
“I was the oldest one in the family and when I got to be 12 years old, there wasn’t anything on the farm I couldn’t do,” Eckes said.
Chatting confidently from his easy chair in his Minnetonka home, Eckes is nothing short of spry. He turned 101 on March 5.
“Birthday wishes are nice to hear, growing older you sometimes fear, but if you’re circled with a loving and caring family, its a joy to be 101,” Eckes said.
Born in Plymouth in 1914, the same year Babe Ruth launched his Major League Baseball career, he grew up learning to harness a team of horses to pull machinery. He had to stay home and drive the team. That was expected of him.
Eckes, whose father lived to be 100, grew up on a Plymouth farm located on Highway 55 and Fernbrook Lane, where Jake’s Restaurant is now located. Later, he owned his own hobby and vegetable farm on Highway 55 and County Road 6, where Anchor Paper Co. is now located.
When Eckes owned his own farm, he woke up early daily to feed hogs and chickens, which he did multiple times a day, while also running a milk route, working nights at a greenhouse and raising eight kids.
“Dad’s drive to work all these many hours was to put us kids through Catholic schools, grade school and high school. That was a must,” said Joan Elliott, one of Eckes’ twin daughters, who currently works in special education.
Eckes’ children all completed grade school at Holy Name of Jesus school. Eckes’ roots run deep within the Holy Name community. His parents, who were married in the church in 1913, had financially supported the rebuilding efforts for the church after it had burned down.
- ‘Birthday wishes are nice to hear, growing older you sometimes fear, but if you’re circled with a loving and caring family, its a joy to be 101, — John Eckes. Murphy News Service photo by Valory Schoenecker
The Holy Name church and school are now historical landmarks.“Their church was their community,” Elliott said.
“Education was important in his eyes. He would have stacks and stacks of National Geographic by his bed,” said Lucia Leck, Eckes’ third eldest daughter, who is a retired elementary school teacher and now Eckes’ caregiver.
Eckes remembers when he and his younger brother, Mark, were kids, they took a badly broken bicycle and fixed it up as best they could, but a hole in the tire was irreperable. Without money to buy a new tire, he said, they went to a grainery and filled the tire with oats. They would ride it until the oats fell out and would go back to the grainery to fill it up repeatedly.
“We thought more of that bicycle with a hole in the front tire than I would a new Cadillac today,” Eckes reflected.
He and his brother were also great trappers, so they thought, he said. They trapped pocket gophers because the town board paid 5 cents per tail. They would put the tails in a fruit jar and bring it to the town’s monthly meeting. Eckes said the town didn’t issue a check under a dollar.
“Well we thought we had a dollar’s worth of tails, alright. We took it to the meeting. We had to count them, so they told us to take the cover off. The smell … they put the cover back on and wrote us a check and said get outta here!” Eckes recalled.
It wasn’t until Eckes was 24 that he married 27-year-old Loretta Etzel.
“The spark was first lit when they were playing hide and seek,” when they were 13, said his oldest son, Danny Eckes, who works as a customer service supervisor at Buffalo’s U.S. Postal Service facility.
Loretta didn’t swear, drink or smoke. She loved to dance and she was good at it, Eckes said. She had a good reputation. “She was somebody that you looked up to,” Leck said.
They were engaged on Valentine’s Day and were married the following September. They wanted to marry on Loretta’s birthday, which was a Saturday, but the Holy Name priest wouldn’t let them. He said, “You celebrate too much Saturday night, you would miss mass on Sunday morning.” So they married that Monday, instead.
Eckes and Loretta went on multiple trips abroad. Their first trip was to Munich, Germany in 1960. They traveled by boat which took them four days at sea. During the trip, which was sponsored by the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, they “had an audience,” or private meeting with Pope John XXIII. The Pope passed away two years later.
They attended the Eucharistic Congress among 500,000 people while in Munich. Everyone was hoping for a miracle and prayers were said for the crippled, Eckes recalled, saying he found it to be a holy and sacred place.
“We didn’t see anybody cured, any miracles, but we were told that that was the result of their miracles — leaving their canes, leaving their wheelchairs, leaving their walkers there,” Eckes said.
After Eckes was married, his dad’s farm deteriorated.
“There was no electricity. There was no running water. The roof leaked. The siding was bad. But we bought it,” Eckes said.
He owned his dad’s farm from 1945 until 1961, when he sold it to the Minneapolis Industrial Park company that bought five farms in the area. Curtis Carlson was the top investor in that group. After Eckes sold his dad’s farm, he moved to Hamel with his family. He bought 160 acres to raise beef cattle and owned that farm from 1961 until 1987, the year after Loretta died.
Eckes said one of his most prized accomplishments is his membership in the Knights of Columbus where he worked up to be the Grand Knight. He also was a member in the Toastmasters Club, which helps people become better public speakers.
Eckes eventually became a lector for his church. “Dad always would enunciate very clearly. He spoke loud enough that people could hear him. He took part of that training and applied it when he became a lector,” Leck said.
Eckes said he loves the Minnesota Twins, blood sausage, square dancing, potato pancakes, Perkins and reading.
“He was a ferocious reader,” his daughter Joan Elliott said. He still reads Reader’s Digest in large print, two daily newspapers and a Catholic magazine. If National Geographic came in large print, he’d be reading that too, Eckes said, adding “I always liked books about animals.”
One of his favorite authors is James Herriot, who wrote “All Creatures Great and Small,” a novel about the busy life of a veterinarian.
Eckes said he also loves old time music and credits his love for waltzing to his late wife.
Eckes lives in the Minnetonka/Hopkins area with his wife, Myrtle, who he married after Loretta passed away. Myrtle, whom he has been married to for 27 years, contently read a newspaper on a nearby couch as Eckes shared his life story.
For a man whose biggest regret is never having attended high school, he still has plenty of sage advice to offer.
“If you’re wrong, admit it. If you’re right, be quiet,” Eckes said, “Don’t forget to say ‘I love you.’”
Reporter Valory Schoenecker is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.
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Eckes’ children include:
- Lois Eckes (Duluth)
- Laura O’Rourke (New Jersey)
- Lucia Leck (Plymouth)
- Danny Eckes (Maple Grove)
- Joan Elliott (Crystal)
- Jane Eckes (Plymouth)
- Joyce Eckes (Plymouth)
- Ralph Eckes (Haworth, WI)