Many people know Marie Hainline from the Bonaparte Retreat Restaurant in Bonaparte. If you’ve had lunch there, she has probably waited on you. Marie is the friendly one, the lady who will chat your leg off about most anything. She has a deep, clear voice and bright eyes.
If you attended the Murder Mystery Dinner Theater at Harmony High School this year or last, you’ve seen her. This year she was the star of “Aunt Maggity, Thunder and Lightening.” She played Aunt Maggity, a caustic and seemingly hardened woman in a wheelchair who writes horror novels.
You may have seen Marie Hainline driving about Van Buren County, or Jefferson, or Lee or Henry Counties. Marie is 93 years old and shows no sign of letting age hold her down. God has always taken care of Marie, and continues to do so.
As a young girl growing up in Stockport, she walked or rode her pony to school on dirt and mud roads. As a young woman, she took a train all by herself from Ft. Madison to San Diego to be with her husband-to-be who had enlisted in the Marines. She found a place to live, and a job at the PX, so that she and Bruce Hainline could be secretly married before he shipped out to fight the Japanese in the South Pacific.
Bruce had told her if she didn’t hear from him for three weeks, she was to go home. She didn’t hear from him, so she went home to Bonaparte. Marie was pregnant. She bought her first baby crib for 50 cents, cooked with a two-burner kerosene stove, and carried water from across the street. She still has that crib. Marie took in laundry, heated water on the two-burner stove, and ironed with a gasoline iron.
The military informed Marie by postcard that Bruce had been wounded. Their first child, Linda, was 18 months old before she saw her dad.
The Big Flood of 1947 hit Bonaparte. Marie and Bruce had 48 inches of water in their home. They just got the mess cleaned out when the flood hit again. The Red Cross gave them $50.
They farmed and had a second child, Steve. Bruce had a car accident and had a broken neck, brain hemorrhage, brain contusion and concussion. He was in the hospital many weeks. Neighbors harvested their crops. Marie didn’t have enough money for the farm payment, but the banker took what she had. Saved again.
They wanted to buy a custodial home in Keosaqua, but the banks wouldn’t loan them the money. They only needed $1,500. She told her brother-in-law about the dilemma. He said, “Come with me, girl, and bring a lantern and spade.” They went out into the chicken house and dug up $1,500 that was buried in a can. Those old chickens were squawking and hollering, but Marie had her custodial home.
A lady came by one day and asked Marie for a job. She told Marie, “If you won’t give me 50 cents an hour, I won’t work!” Marie hired her, and she was with Marie many years. One of Marie’s residents at the custodial home was Marie’s mother.
The law came around and closed Marie down, along with nursing homes in Bonaparte, Farmington, Keosaqua and Stockport. Marie was out of a job again.
Marie had two more children. Her husband, Bruce, passed away in 2000. Marie went to work for Rose and Ben Hendricks, owners of the Bonaparte Retreat. She is still there today. If you stop in for lunch, chances are Marie will wait on you. Or, attend the Murder Mystery Dinner Theater next year. It’s a fund raiser for the Bonaparte Library. Marie will no doubt be playing her part, like a tried and true member of the Greatest Generation.
Contact Curt Swarm in Mt. Pleasant
at 319-217-0526 or curtswarm@yahoo.com