Rural Iowa paper columnist retires after 70 years

Evelyn Birkby celebrated her 100th birthday earlier
this year. (Photo provided to the Register)

Evelyn Birkby "never dreamed of being a writer, let alone one of the longest-tenured columnists in American newspaper history," Daniel Finney reports for the Des Moines Register. But Birkby, now 100, retired last week after 70 years of writing her weekly column for readers in Shenandoah, Iowa.

Her writing career began in 1949 after her husband Robert saw an ad in the Shenandoah Evening Sentinel (now the Shenandoah Sentinel) seeking a farmer's wife to write a homemaker's column. She never missed a week after that, though sometimes Bob ghost-wrote a column if she was unavailable. 

"Evelyn’s columns were printed efforts to be a good neighbor. She spoke about her family, her community and stirred in wit and wisdom," Finney writes. And though her columns were mostly lighthearted, "she wrote about serious topics, too. She wrote about losing her daughter, Dulcie Jean, to a sudden illness when she was 5. She wrote about losing her sight in old age. She wrote about falling in love with her husband and his love letters, though she would never be so bold as to publish the actual text." 

Shenandoah, Iowa (Wikipedia map)

Birkby rarely wrote about politics, but when she did, it was always a call to be more civil, Finney reports. "Evelyn was also a multimedia star. She made regular radio appearances on the Shenandoah radio station KMA-FM, part of a long tradition of homemakers sharing life tips on the airwaves that dates back to the 1920s. And she published 13 books during her career, three in the past seven years."