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Highlands Today

Octogenarian Family Still Celebrates Their Many Years

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By LAURA NESBITT

Highlands Today

Published: March 12, 2009

AVON PARK - His family grew up "as poor as Job's Christmas turkey," said Jim Rahenkamp, the youngest of seven octogenarian siblings living in Avon Park.

But the seven 80-year-old siblings have since made a living in the health care field, as teachers, pastors, engineers and missionaries in India.

"We're close enough that I just get on my bicycle and go over to see Paul," said Rahenkamp about his brothers and sisters who live in the same decade and who now live in close proximity to one another. Once a month the siblings get together and share a meal. For about 50 years they have passed a letter full of family updates back and forth.

Two other living siblings, Miriam Harwell and Joseph Rahenkamp, are both in their 70s and living out-of-state. A third sibling, Eunice Rhoads, died of a brain tumor when she was 51 years old. The Avon Park siblings sometimes visit Joseph Rahenkamp in North Carolina. Because of health problems, Miriam Harwell stays in contact with Geneva Beck, Jim Rahenkamp said.

The family lived in several different states when the children were growing up. Parents William and Letha Rahenkamp were both educators and in their 90s when they died. William also worked as a painter and interim pastor, and Letha worked as a nurse and operated a nurse's registery. The family was very poor. Each of the 10 siblings had to pay for schooling. They also paid their parents for room and board.

"In high school we heated and cooked with wood," Jim Rahenkamp said.

"A big pot of oatmeal was our standard breakfast."

Jim Rahenkamp had worked for several years in both a meat market and a textile mill before he was 18 years old.

There was a period when the family didn't have electricity. The siblings walked to a nearby spring to carry water back to the house.

"We used to say the house was air conditioned because it had cracks in the floor," Jim Rahenkamp laughed.

In 1940 William Rahenkamp built a house for the family but "even there we heated and cooked with wood," Jim Rahenkamp said.

"If you saw my father coming home with a block of ice on the front bumper of the car" it was a good day, Jim Rahenkamp said while adding that the family would then mix up ice cream using their six-quart ice cream freezer.

"We would all run around the house saying, 'I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,'" Jim Rahenkamp said.

Highlands Today reporter Laura Nesbitt can be reached at (863) 386-5857 or lnesbitt@highlandstoday.com.

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