By Jill Fennema –

On November 3, Irene (Schaap) Feikema will celebrate her 100th birthday. Her family has an open house planned in her honor on her birthday in the Verdoes Room at Edgebrook Care Center.

Irene was born in 1924 on the Schaap family farm, three miles north of Lismore. She was the firstborn child of Henry and Mary (Bolluyt) Schaap. Soon to join her in the family were Frieda, Howard, and Milton. Her siblings have all passed on now.

Mary and Henry were a typical midwestern farm family, raising cows, hogs, and chickens. Irene helped out on the farm – mostly in the kitchen and doing chicken chores. She also remembers picking up cobs out of the pig pen to be burned in the stove.

Irene went to Lismore country school and then Leota Christian School through the 8th grade. She took a couple a years off from school to help out on the farm and then returned to school at Chandler High School. She graduated in 1944 when she was 20 years old. She was the salutatorian for her class. She said that English was her favorite subject.

After high school, Irene enrolled at Nettelton College in Sioux Falls where she studied business. After her graduation she took a position as a bookkeeper at what was then known as Sioux Valley Hospital. She had an apartment with a friend and worked at that job for three and a half years.

She joined the First Christian Reformed Church in Sioux Falls and met a young man named Frank Feikema. His family farmed near Renner, S.D. They dated for a couple of years and were married on November 26, 1948.

The wedding was heldat Ebenezer Christian Reformed Church, the church that Irene grew up in. But her pastor from Sioux Falls, Rev. Vander Riet, performed the ceremony.