You may expect a lot of things from a person who just turned 109 years of age Friday and who has been mostly blind and deaf for many years. But what you don't expect is for that person to be kibitzing and cracking jokes like Elizabeth Buhler.
How do you feel? she's asked.
"Like you," she says with a smile. "OK. With your hands, right?"
Elizabeth Buhler lived through the horrors of the Russian Revolution and went on to raise a family in Manitoba. Photo: Joe Bryksa / Winnipeg Free PressShe is remarkably attractive at her age but when this is commented on, she waves her hands as if to shoo her visitors away. "There are many women look much better," she said. Then she leaned over and surprised the photographer, asking him if he would like to live as long as her.
Elizabeth "Liese" Buhler, nee Unger, was born February 8, 1899 in Grigoryevka, Ukraine. She is believed to be Manitoba's oldest living person, after Mary Ann Scoles of Treherne died last summer at age 110.
Buhler's face is so well-preserved and her hands are soft like chamois, yet still have much strength in them. She lived through the Russian Revolution. The war between the Red communist army and the White resisters went through her village three times. When the anarchists invaded and came to pillage her house and kill the family, Elizabeth had begun playing the guitar and singing hymns. The commander ordered his men to leave and not take anything from the family.
She had seven children -- one son that died in childbirth, another son and five daughters. Today, she has 20 grandchildren, 43 great-grandchildren, and 23 great-great-grandchildren.
Her longevity, she said, "is the Lord's work." "The main thing is if it's OK here," she said, patting her heart.
Buhler married Isaac Buhler on September 7, 1924 in Russia. Her husband was a heavy smoker but the second-hand smoke apparently didn't affect her. Her husband died in 1970 at age 69. Her son, Isaac, 82, accompanied the Free Press on Friday. "I'm old and I still have my mother. Not too many 82-year-olds can say that," Isaac said.
She started to need considerably more assistance in the last four years. When her eyesight gave out, she played tapes of the Bible so regularly the tape machine wore out.
She and her husband farmed about 15 kilometres south of Winkler, almost at the American border, but moved into the city in the 1950s. Isaac said his mother lived in the Lions Manor for many years and moved to Salem Home in the last two years.
"When she was 103, she did her own cooking so Salem wouldn't take her in -- they said she was too healthy," Buhler said.
Ken Reddig, director of the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies in Canada, said Buhler and her husband were among the 21,000 Mennonites who came to Canada during the Russian Revolution through a unique arrangement with the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Reddig said the railroad floated credit of more than $1.5 million to help the Mennonites leave Russia and come to Canada. In return, the Mennonites, through the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization, paid off the debt in November 1946. That organization later amalgamated with others and became the Mennonite Central Committee.
By Bill Redekop
With files from Kevin Rollason
Copyright Winnipeg Free Press
