Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....CONKRITE, Fern July 23, 1999
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LaVonne Bennett lib@dogsbark.comMarch 10, 2006, 10:46 am

THE SEBEWA RECOLLECTOR, Bulletin of the Sebewa Center Association; Volume 35, October 1999, Number 2.  Submitted with permission of Editor, Grayden D. Slowins
Fern Conkrite, 104, born March 3, 1895, died July 23, 1999, only child of 
Charles Conkrite and Emma (Wainright).  She never married, had no children, and 
lost her business partner, Gertrude (Gertie) Fishell in 1984.  Her parents had 
lived on Musgrove Highway in the Sebewa side of town prior to her birth, and 
ran a store in the Friend Block double building.  But they moved to their farm 
in Danby on the south side of the Morris Road, just west of Okemos Road at 
Meshimeneconning, in time for her birth.  The Indians were goine, but she was a 
good friend of the Charles Ingalls family who grew up with the Indians and 
bought their land.  Her grandparents Wainright were right around the corner on 
Okemos Road and her grandparents Conkrite had homesteaded in the same Sec. 21, 
but around on the Charlotte Highway side of the Grand River, before Centerline 
Bridge was built.  Her parents moved back to Sebewa village on the Danby side 
(Cornell), when she was two years old and lived there always after that.  After 
graduating from eighth grade at Sebewa High at age 15 in 1910, Fern worked for 
ten years as a baby nurse, caring for newborn babies and their mothers and 
helping with the housework.  Some of those babies are now approaching age 
ninety themselves!  During this time Fern was pianist at Sebewa Corners 
Methodist Church and continued this service at Portland Church of the 
Nazarene.  We heard her play at her 100th birthday party!  She and Gertie ran a 
wallpaper & paint store in Portland and also hung wallpaper & painted.  Later 
they farmed on the south edge of Portland at Okemos Road, and when the I-96 
Freeway took most of their land & buildings, they built a retirement home on 
Riverside Drive.  Then in 1978 they made one last move to the Senior Citizen 
Housing on Lillian Boulevard in Portland.  Fern was a walking history book of 
Portland-Sebewa-Danby.  We published some of her memories in 1991, but she made 
us stop until her death to protect those still living who might be offended.  
It is safe to print them now, and anyway we suspect the members of those 
families will get a chuckle when we do!  Some years ago Robert Wilfred Gierman 
& I compiled a list of about 12 people born before 1900 who might get to live 
in three centuries.  Only Iva Dunlap, daughter of D. C. Ingall & Ada Daniels, 
remains and she is not as sharp as Fern was. 

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