She's seen it all - Great Aunt Julia

This is an article about my great aunt Julia...she's 103!


She's seen it all

Luxemburg's oldest daughter ready to celebrate village's centennial

By Leigh Ann Wagner Kroening
Kewaunee County News

At 103 years old, Julia Rueckl has gotten used to people asking her for tips to living such a long life, but she still doesn't know how to answer them.

The oldest living Luxemburg resident never was big into exercise or eating healthy. In fact, as the daughter of the village's first butcher, she grew up eating enough red meat to make a cardiologist cry.

"Our family favorite was blood sausage," Rueckl said. "My mother always made the best blood sausage."

Rueckl's grandparents, Lawrence and Barbara Kohlbeck, moved from Germany to America in 1884. Her father, George Kohlbeck was 11 years old when the family settled in Luxemburg.

As a youngster, George Kohlbeck worked as a farmhand for a local family, while his father would drive by horse and buggy to Kewaunee with orders for meat from the local townspeople.

"One day the owner of the meat market in Kewaunee asked Grandpa if he knew of a young man who would come to work from him, and he suggested my dad," Rueckl said. "He didn't know anything about that kind of work, but he went because of the good wages and because the butcher's wife was a good cook. He said he tried his best to keep the job because he liked the meals."

Eventually, George Kohlbeck started Kohlbeck's Meat Market in Luxemburg, and married Albertina Stahl. The two had 10 children, two of whom died in infancy. Julia was the fourth and grew up working in her family's store.

"We all helped," Rueckl said. "Mom made liver and blood sausages, and we children helped with meat deliveries. When my sister married and left, I became the bookkeeper."

Having lived more than a century, Rueckl has witnessed a lot of change in the world. She remembers having to wash clothes with a washboard and taking the train to Green Bay to do any major shopping. Life at the meat market in the early 1900s was difficult, she said.

"We didn't have electricity so there was no refrigerator or freezer to store the meat," Rueckl said. "We used to have to cut ice off the pond in the winter, wrap it in sawdust and store it in the barn to keep until summer. I am still so amazed by electricity. It made life in the shop so much easier when we were able to have refrigerators and other machines to help do the job."

Rueckl also remembers using horses and a buggy to do the deliveries. At that time, most of the Luxemburg homes and businesses were in the "upper village," up the noticeable hill on Main Street. The thing that has changed most about the village is that the businesses have moved to the downtown area, she said.

Though the family worked hard, Rueckl said there were a lot of happy times too. Her mother came from a musical family, and a few of Rueckl's sisters would play piano while she and her parents and siblings would dance.

"My mother thought it was very important to have a piano in the house," Rueckl said. "Our home was always filled with music."

The family also loved to have large gatherings with lots of food, something Rueckl's niece Bonnie Seiler still remembers fondly.

"Christmas was always special," Seiler said. "Grandpa had a life-sized nativity set, and all the families would come. Of course, the grown-ups would eat first, and the kids were tortured by the smell of good things to eat."

Seiler said the grandchildren also helped in the meat market and the family's small farm. It was a close-knit family that shared many good times together, she said.

"It was just always nice to go to Grandpa's house," Seiler said. "Julia and my other aunts always made it a special place to be."

Rueckl lived in Luxemburg until one month before her 100th birthday when she moved to the Algoma Long-Term Care Unit. She plans to return to the village to help celebrate its centennial.

"I'm going to be there, and it's going to be grand," she said.