Valparaiso resident Emily Thorpe, who will turn 100 later this month, laughs as she and her daughters share stories about her life on Thursday, July 8, 2022. (Kyle Telechan for the Post-Tribune) (Kyle Telechan / Post-Tribune)

In these difficult times it can’t hurt to get a little advice from someone who’s been around the block a time or two. Emily Thorpe, of Valparaiso, who turns 100 on July 28, is happy to share her vitality regimen that includes not sweating the small stuff, lots of chocolate, a well-defined brow, plenty of TV and the occasional bawdy joke, if she can slip it past her daughters.

“Just don’t ask how much I weigh,” she said. Born Emily Bukalski to Polish immigrants on Gary’s east side, Thorpe was the middle child of three siblings. Her father worked at the mill for 10 years until he’d saved enough money to buy a 185-acre farm on Ind. 8 in Kouts.

The family moved there on March 1, 1932. There were chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, cows, and horses, but no indoor plumbing. “Say it was a two-holer,” she said with a wicked grin over the objections of her oldest and youngest daughters, Vicki Nowlin and Barb McKean, both of Valparaiso. “You could take a friend in there with you.”

Thorpe drove the family tractor once they upgraded from horsepower. “You plowed the ground first, and then you harrowed,” she said. “I was the city girl that turned into the farmer’s daughter.”

Vicki Nowlin sorts through photos of her soon-to-be 100 year old mother Emily Thorpe as they speak about her life on Thursday, July 8, 2022. (Kyle Telechan for the Post-Tribune) (Kyle Telechan / Post-Tribune)

Thorpe attended the old schoolhouse in Kouts that is now an apartment building and remembers going out front to a pump with her collapsible metal cup when she got thirsty. She said hers was the first class that entered the new school building across the street, which is still in use to this day.

She graduated in 1941 and attended Gary Business College for a year before going to work at U.S. Sheet and Tin in Gary. There she processed paperwork for bundles of steel being prepared for shipment. After a year there Thorpe moved on to the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant until she joined the Navy in 1945.

Thorpe was a WAVE, the women’s branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve, in Brooklyn, New York and has many glamorous souvenir nightclub photos with her friends and roommates from that time. She did secretarial work and the Navy’s barracks for women consisted of some very nice apartments.

The Navy had a formula for how long WAVEs served. Thorpe had earned enough points for an honorable discharge in 1946 after 11 months and returned to the farm in Kouts where she lived while working at the local hardware store for the next two years.

A photo of nearly-100-year-old Valparaiso resident Emily Thorpe taken during a hospital visit in her younger years sits on a table as Thorpe and her daughters talk about her life on Thursday, July 8, 2022. (Kyle Telechan for the Post-Tribune) (Kyle Telechan / Post-Tribune)

In February of 1948 she met her husband Keith. “A man came to put a furnace in our house and that was my future husband,” she said.

By April they were engaged, and married August 29, 1948, just six months after that furnace install. “Hey, I was 26 years old and I was considered an old maid,” Thorpe said. Keith was two years younger than Emily and while he never would jitterbug with her, she said he was an excellent slow dancer.

On July 22, 1949 the Thorpes welcomed their first child, Barney, named for Emily’s older brother, Staff Sgt. Bruno “Barney” Bukalski, who went missing from the Army Air Corps in 1943.

The Thorpes raised two boys and five girls at 601 Yellowstone in Valparaiso where they lived for 23 years. “We didn’t have a lot of money, but we had a nice home, a very clean home that Mom would have to scrub on her hands and knees,” said Nowlin.

In 1978 the couple moved to 2751 Hearthstone in Valparaiso where Emily lived with Keith until his death in 2007. In 2008 she moved next door to one of her daughters in Portage before moving to Brookdale Senior Living in Valparaiso four years ago.

Thorpe’s refusal to worry helps her stay resilient in the face of life’s challenges, such as macular degeneration forcing her to find alternatives to her beloved scouring of the newspaper and word finds. After decades of cooking every day, many years for nine people, Thorpe says it’s not being able to cook any more that’s her biggest personal challenge.

“It doesn’t do any good,” she said. “You can worry your head off and it’s still there.” Even such an attitude doesn’t mean one has to ignore the realities of today’s society. “I don’t know what’s wrong with people, really,” Thorpe said.

Valparaiso Brookdale Senior Living resident Emily Thorpe, who will turn 100 later this month, shares stories about her life on Thursday, July 8, 2022. (Kyle Telechan for the Post-Tribune) (Kyle Telechan / Post-Tribune)

At Brookdale she lifts her spirits playing Bingo and keeps to a strict schedule of watching “The Price is Right” from 10 to 11 a.m., and “Dr. Phil” from 3 to 4 p.m. “Do you have any clue what time it is?” she’ll ask her kids if they call during these sacred hours, “Goodbye.”

There she wants for nothing but a regular stream of supplies from her six living children who have all stayed in the area. “We’ll get a phone call, ‘I’m out of Dove chocolate,’” said Nowlin.

“Or ‘I want somebody to make me a cherry pie,’” said McKean. They said these requests fall in line with Thorpe’s general intake of white bread, sugar and no exercise. “I thank God every day I’m healthy,” Thorpe said. “That’s all you can hope for is good health.”

And maybe a little companionship. “I’d give anything to find a good-looking 80-year-old man. No older, with a good pension. That should cover it,” Thorpe said.

Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.