Mary Lou poses with her father, Taffy Morton, and his wife, Dorothy (Withrow) Morton.

Mary Lou is all smiles after building a snowman in her first winter back in Tarkio after living in Florida.

This is Mary Lou’s senior picture from Tarkio High School.

Mary Lou Knepper celebrated her 90th birthday February 3, 2024.

If the word social butterfly had a face and a smile a name, Mary Lou Knepper’s would come to mind. Crediting her long life to being social, keeping in contact with friends and family with regular phone calls and visits, playing cards, making trips, and still driving her own car, Mary Lou Knepper celebrated her 90th birthday February 3, 2024.

Mary Lou Morton was born February 3, 1934, to Taffy and Alice (Huston) Morton at her home in Tarkio. Sadly, her mother passed away just three weeks later due to complications from childbirth. Mary Lou went to stay with her mother’s parents who lived on a farm near Blanchard in northwestern Atchison County. At the age of two, Mary Lou and her grandparents moved to Orlando, Florida, where they had family. Some of Mary Lou’s first memories were spending days with her toes in the sand on Daytona Beach. At age five, Mary Lou came back home to live with her father and stepmother, Dorothy (Withrow) Morton. She started first grade in Tarkio and completed all of her schooling through college in Tarkio.

Although Mary Lou remained an only child, she was not a lonely child by any means. Back then, there were hordes of children on every block and Mary Lou and her Park Street friends were always outside having fun, whether that was riding bikes, playing kick the can, Mother may I, and hide and seek in the summer or sleigh riding in the winter. At Halloween, the older kids would decorate the Huletts’ basement and make it into a haunted house, in which they sent the younger kids. She said it scared the living daylights out of them, but they all made it completely through. A chicken house at her uncle Frank Withrow’s was converted into a playhouse for the kids. On hot days, the youngsters would go down to Mary Lou’s family’s ice house where Taffy would be selling grape, orange, or strawberry pop and watermelon or they’d venture to Withrow’s Drug Store for a milk shake (Mary Lou would also spend her lunch periods during the school year at Withrow’s, where Dorothy would give her a sandwich, chips, and milkshake). The kids would also go to the movie theatre, spending 50 cents to see the latest flick. On hot nights, she’d sleep on the upper porch that wrapped around the house. The family also had a screened-in porch where they ate their meals in summer. Mary Lou remarked that even then, she recalls never feeling hot. They didn’t have air conditioning so her body was used to the warmth.

Although Mary Lou’s child-hood was blissful, it still consisted of hard work. Taffy delivered ice to the ice boxes of residents all over town and Mary Lou would assist him. He would also unload the mail and freight from the train and after taking the mail to the post office, he’d drive a truck around town delivering the freight with Mary Lou by his side. The family had a huge garden and potato plot. The potatoes were planted and harvested by Ben Bywater and his kids. But it was Mary Lou’s job to mow the spacious yard. Starting at 8:00 a.m. every Saturday in the summer, it would take her until noon to push mow the entire lot. She said that it never failed, her father would start out the morning helping her, but always had something to do downtown around two hours into the job.

At 16 years old, Mary Lou walked into the Buick Garage in town and paid 50 cents for a driver’s license. There was no written or driving test required in those days. In fact, she had not driven a vehicle at all until after she received her license. Her father taught her how to drive using his pickup with a manual transmission; Mary Lou learning the clutch and killing it most times. However, she eventually mastered the skill and is still driving to this day.

For people living and traveling through Tarkio in those days, a drive up and down Main Street looked quite different. Just on the Withrow’s Drug Store side of the street alone, there was Davis Furniture Store, Withrow’s, the dime store, a grocery store, Wheeler’s Barber Shop, Vogue (children’s and women’s clothing), Marti’s hardware and electric store, the Tumble Inn, and a bar. Businesses flourished in town. Mary Lou worked at Parr Shoe Shop & Magazines and Cunningham & Hooper Insurance, making $75 per month in the summer when she wasn’t in school and could work full time. That was big money back then! When Mary Lou graduated from Tarkio College in 1956 with a business degree, she began teaching typing and shorthand in Glenwood, Iowa, making $3,100 per year (this was more than teachers made in Missouri). Mary Lou laughed in remembrance that she spent her first paycheck in its entirety in one day of shopping in Omaha and had to get a loan from her father to make it until the next paycheck. While teaching in Glenwood, she roomed with Mrs. Coffee and would come home on the weekends by train from Pacific Junction, Iowa, to Langdon, Missouri. She taught until she got married in 1957.

Mary Lou married Laurence Knepper in July of that year and she inherited Laurence’s two children, Teresa, age five, and Allan, age three and one-half. She moved into the house she still lives in 67 years later. Because Mary Lou was an instant mom, she began cooking. Her daughter Teresa chimed in, “By cooking she means full meals. We had three full meals a day and those meals did not consist of sandwiches or easy fixings.” Her days of cooking turned into a love of cooking that never ended. She even wrote a cookbook in 2011 with a byline “It needs a little sugar.” Teresa said, “People are always calling Mom asking her why their food concoction just doesn’t taste quite right and she is always telling them, ‘It just needs a little sugar.’” Eight hundred copies were printed and all 800 were sold. Mary Lou is now famous for her delicious dishes, but especially her rolls and cinnamon rolls. The gardening from her youth continued into adulthood and she still grows some of her own food, including tomatoes, peppers, and herbs she cultivates in a garden behind her house.

Mary Lou stayed home to take care of the children when they were little, but eventually she began substitute teaching at Tarkio R-I schools. She said she even got stuck subbing in the shop class on occasion, which was not her forte. After 10 years or so, she became a teacher’s aide in the elementary school. Finally, she became the superintendent’s secretary, a job she kept until the age of 70 when she retired in 2004. However, retirement didn’t mean the end to work. She still went into the school on a regular basis for 10 more years assisting them in the office.

When not helping her father on his routes, or gardening, or mowing, or being a mom, or cooking elaborate meals, or working in the school, Mary Lou enjoyed being a part of several organizations. In college, she was a member of the Lambda Sigma Tau sorority. She was a Girl Scout leader to Teresa’s group of girls, providing them with wonderful meals. Teresa joked, “She was not the crafty Girl Scout leader.” Although Mary Lou’s craft skills left something to be desired, her cooking did not and she went on to assist the Bible School and Kids of the Kingdom groups with food. She’s been a member of the Tarkio Presbyterian Church since 1957 (she was also part of the Presbyterian Women) and this year will celebrate 50 years with the P.E.O. Sisterhood. She’s been a member of a book club, a Tarkio College women’s club, and a group of friends who meet to play bridge. She’s also a part of the Kansas City Chiefs and Golden State Warriors’ informal fan clubs, cheering them on from the comfort of her home. She also goes up against her family in their own March Madness bracket competition (she remarked she didn’t do very well this year).

Mary Lou’s social circle includes her family, that expanded from her two children to four grandkids and five great-grandchildren. Mary Lou is blessed in getting to see them regularly even though they are spread out around the U.S. Her family even came together to throw her a 90th birthday party in February.

Ninety! Some may consider anyone who is 90 beyond remembering the days of old, but Mary Lou and anyone who knows her will agree that 90 is just a number and no representation of her other than her years spent on this earth. Even during this interview, Mary Lou’s phone rang due to someone trying to remember details about a certain family member’s job history, and Mary Lou remembered it all. All of us hope that we are as active, and social, and happy, with a wit and memory to boot when we reach 90, if we are so lucky to reach that age at all. And although Mary Lou can say she is lucky to have had such a long life, we as a community are just as lucky to have had her as a part of our “family,” teaching us, making us laugh, filling our bellies, and providing us with knowledge that hopefully will last another 90 years.