October 4, 2018 Oldham Era Article on Sis Marker's 100th Birthday
Well-known Pewee Valley photographer Kate Matthews took and handpainted this high school graduation photo of Louise Herdt in 1936.
Lifetime Pewee Valley resident Louise Herdt “Sis” Marker is about to become a member of a very exclusive club. On October 7, she will join the ranks of an estimated 72,000-plus Americans who have lived a century or longer.
To mark this major milestone, the Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church, 119 Central Avenue, is hosting a 100th birthday open house in her honor after worship services on Sunday, October 7 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Family Life Center on the church campus.
And everyone, of course, is invited, because Sis wouldn’t have it any other way.
Long before Americans embraced inclusiveness as a core value, the soon-to-be centenarian was practicing it in her daily life. Sis has always steadfastly refused to send out special invitations for parties -- even daughter Ginny Chisholm’s wedding. “I didn’t want anyone to feel left out who wanted to come,” she explains.
To mark this major milestone, the Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church, 119 Central Avenue, is hosting a 100th birthday open house in her honor after worship services on Sunday, October 7 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Family Life Center on the church campus.
And everyone, of course, is invited, because Sis wouldn’t have it any other way.
Long before Americans embraced inclusiveness as a core value, the soon-to-be centenarian was practicing it in her daily life. Sis has always steadfastly refused to send out special invitations for parties -- even daughter Ginny Chisholm’s wedding. “I didn’t want anyone to feel left out who wanted to come,” she explains.
Growing Up in Pewee Valley
Born in the waning days of Pewee Valley’s “Little Colonel” era, Sis remembers when Annie Fellows Johnston and her stepdaughter Mary were living in The Beeches. She was a frequent visitor at Clovercroft, the Matthews family home at the corner of Ash Avenue and Highway 146, where photographer Kate Matthews plied her trade, and Sis served as a model in several of her photos. In fact, her Crestwood High School graduation picture is a hand-painted and signed Kate Matthews original.
Through weekly lessons in Clovercroft’s music room taught by Kate’s musically-gifted sister, Jesse Joy, she learned to play the piano. When her former teacher retired as organist for the Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church, it was prize pupil Sis who next warmed the Aeolian organ’s bench.
Sis was also a frequent visitor at Edgewood, home of Fanny Craig, the inspiration for “Miss Allison” in the “Little Colonel” tales. Sis reminisces, “She read us stories and gave us soft drinks.” One of the books Sis especially remembers: James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans.”
Born in the waning days of Pewee Valley’s “Little Colonel” era, Sis remembers when Annie Fellows Johnston and her stepdaughter Mary were living in The Beeches. She was a frequent visitor at Clovercroft, the Matthews family home at the corner of Ash Avenue and Highway 146, where photographer Kate Matthews plied her trade, and Sis served as a model in several of her photos. In fact, her Crestwood High School graduation picture is a hand-painted and signed Kate Matthews original.
Through weekly lessons in Clovercroft’s music room taught by Kate’s musically-gifted sister, Jesse Joy, she learned to play the piano. When her former teacher retired as organist for the Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church, it was prize pupil Sis who next warmed the Aeolian organ’s bench.
Sis was also a frequent visitor at Edgewood, home of Fanny Craig, the inspiration for “Miss Allison” in the “Little Colonel” tales. Sis reminisces, “She read us stories and gave us soft drinks.” One of the books Sis especially remembers: James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans.”
Jesse Joy is pictured wearing evening clothes in the parlor at Clovercroft in this handpainted photograph by her sister Kate Matthews. Sis took piano lessons from her and when she retired, replaced her as the organist at Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church.
The Sweet Shop ca. 1990, from the National Register of Historic Places.
Before helicopter parenting came into vogue, Sis and her siblings and friends enjoyed remarkable freedom. They swam in Powhatan Wooldridge’s pond at The Locust and in the creek at Pine Bluff, now the site of the Kentucky Correctional Institute for Women. They played punch ball – “like baseball without a bat,” Sis explains – in the Pewee Valley schoolyard next door to their family home on Tulip Avenue. They attended free movies with the residents at the Kentucky Confederate Home. They visited neighbors and family members and friends – “… anybody who would give you something to eat,” Sis recalls with a laugh. And they pedaled their bikes from Pewee Valley all the way down Westport Road, past the potato fields where local kids could earn pocket money picking, to Plehn’s Bakery in St. Matthews for ice cream.
In the days before electric refrigerators, ice cream was a real treat. Sis vividly recalls the day her mother, Ida Ochsner Herdt, sent her up to the Sweet Shop for two cones – one for her mom and one for herself. On the return trip, one of the scoops fell off and landed in the gravel. Sis put it back on the cone – gravel side down, of course -- and presented it to her mother. Noting the stones in the ice cream, her mother asked, “Sis, did you drop this?”
Backbone of the Community
Over her life, Sis has made many contributions to the city of her birth, including:
Over her life, Sis has made many contributions to the city of her birth, including:
- 25 years with the Pewee Valley Post Office. She began her career at the original post office building behind the Pewee Valley Vet on Central Avenue, where employees did without such modern-day conveniences such as indoor plumbing, and retired in 1981.
- Over 30 years as the volunteer organist for the Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church, which she has attended all her life and where she married her late husband, Louis W. Marker, Jr., on September 20, 1943.
- Over 50 years as the bookkeeper for the Herdt Motor Company, Pewee Valley’s longest- running family business, founded by her grandfather, Jacob Herdt, in 1898. Sis took over the bookkeeping duties when her mother died in 1957 and didn’t retire until 2011, when her 94-year-old brother, Bill, who owned the company, decided to close up shop.
Those who know Sis well, however, know that most of her contributions have been behind the scenes. While her late brother Bill served on both Pewee Valley’s Fire Department and Town Council, and her late sister Virginia Herdt “Gin” Chaudoin served as Town Historian, Sis made countless hospital and nursing home visits, helped friends and neighbors in need, and lent her support to many community projects.
During the holidays, Sis made candy and delivered it on Christmas Eve before she went to church to practice the music for the midnight service. Popcorn balls and bourbon balls were family favorites, but she is probably most famed for her homemade modjeskas, a recipe co-created with her friend Kewpie Wagner and published in the Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church cookbook:
2 cups white sugar
1-3/4 cups light syrup
2 cups cream
1 stick butter
25 marshmallows cut in half
Add together the sugar, syrup and butter. Cook with 3/4 cup of the cream to a soft ball. Add half of the remaining cream (warmed), and cook to firm ball. Pour on cookie sheet. When cool, cut in squares and wrap around the ½ marshmallows. Wrap individually in waxed paper. Makes about 50.
Sis's parents, Ida Ochsner and William Herdt, Sr.
She credits her mother, former Pewee Valley telephone operator Ida Ochsner Herdt, for endowing her with her love of music and cooking, as well as her generous spirit. “My mother fed the hoboes from the trains when they came looking for a handout,” she remembers.
But it was also her mother who taught her to stand up for herself and fight her own battles. “One day I went home from school crying, because a boy beat me up. My mother told me, ‘If you don’t go over there and whip him, I’m gonna whip YOU.’ So I went back over there and beat him up,” she recalls with a mischievous grin.
The last stanza of Sam Walter Foss’s poem, “The House by the Side of the Road” – a favorite of both her late husband and daughter Ginny -- beautifully sums up the way Sis has endeavored to live her very long and exemplary life:
Let me live in my
house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish- so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?-
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
Followup Story on the Birthday Party from the October 2018 Call of the Pewee
Pewee Valley Mayor Bob Rogers presents Sis with a birthday balloon bouquet and a plaque that will mark a tree planted in her honor in Central Park. Photo by Donna Russell.
Sunday, October 7 was sunny and unusually warm. The mercury hit 90 – 17 degrees above average. But the August-like heat didn’t deter over 200 friends, neighbors and relatives from stopping by Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church’s Family Life Center to wish Sis Marker a happy 100th birthday.
During the two-and-a-half hour event, Pewee Valley’s oldest birthday girl sat in a comfortable wingback chair and greeted a steady stream of guests. Two large tables of photos and memorabilia – one put together by her daughter Ginny Chisholm and the other by the church she faithfully served as organist for over three decades – provided glimpses of Sis’s long life. One item partygoers agreed was especially apropos of Sis’s character was an apron embroidered with, "Make sure your words are sweet and tender. Tomorrow you may have to eat them.”
Many guests brought small gifts, but three were exceptionally unique. Mayor Bob Rogers presented Sis with a balloon bouquet and showed her a plaque that will soon adorn a Yellowwood tree planted in her honor in Central Park. Pewee Valley Postmaster Andrea Braden presented her with a gift box containing over 100 birthday cards and greetings collected from well-wishers near and far, including a special birthday greeting from U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brannan. Sis worked for the Pewee Valley Post Office for 25 years before retiring in 1981. And Oldham Era Publisher Jane Ashley Pace and Reporter Amanda Manning presented Sis with a framed copy of the Oldham Era’s front page from the week she was born in 1918.
Partygoers received gifts as well: printed recipe cards for Sis’s specialty, Modjeskas, as well as a tiny gift bag with a Modjkesa inside – symbolic of all the caramel-covered marshmallow confections Sis gave as gifts over the years.
Of her party, Sis says with a big smile, “It couldn’t have been better. Everything was wonderful, from the food to the flowers to the turnout. I got to see everyone, and everyone got to visit with each other.”
Ginny is awed by the time and energy so many gave to make the celebration a success. “What a wonderful demonstration of love for her,” she says. “Mom’s description of the party is perfect. It couldn’t have been better.”
During the two-and-a-half hour event, Pewee Valley’s oldest birthday girl sat in a comfortable wingback chair and greeted a steady stream of guests. Two large tables of photos and memorabilia – one put together by her daughter Ginny Chisholm and the other by the church she faithfully served as organist for over three decades – provided glimpses of Sis’s long life. One item partygoers agreed was especially apropos of Sis’s character was an apron embroidered with, "Make sure your words are sweet and tender. Tomorrow you may have to eat them.”
Many guests brought small gifts, but three were exceptionally unique. Mayor Bob Rogers presented Sis with a balloon bouquet and showed her a plaque that will soon adorn a Yellowwood tree planted in her honor in Central Park. Pewee Valley Postmaster Andrea Braden presented her with a gift box containing over 100 birthday cards and greetings collected from well-wishers near and far, including a special birthday greeting from U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brannan. Sis worked for the Pewee Valley Post Office for 25 years before retiring in 1981. And Oldham Era Publisher Jane Ashley Pace and Reporter Amanda Manning presented Sis with a framed copy of the Oldham Era’s front page from the week she was born in 1918.
Partygoers received gifts as well: printed recipe cards for Sis’s specialty, Modjeskas, as well as a tiny gift bag with a Modjkesa inside – symbolic of all the caramel-covered marshmallow confections Sis gave as gifts over the years.
Of her party, Sis says with a big smile, “It couldn’t have been better. Everything was wonderful, from the food to the flowers to the turnout. I got to see everyone, and everyone got to visit with each other.”
Ginny is awed by the time and energy so many gave to make the celebration a success. “What a wonderful demonstration of love for her,” she says. “Mom’s description of the party is perfect. It couldn’t have been better.”
Sis poses with a floral arrangement from her party at Belmont Village Senior Living Facility in St. Matthews. Photo courtesy of Ginny Chisholm.
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