Secret to Aging Well

By G. Romero Wendorf

Nedra Kinerk is one of those people I look up to because no matter what kind of heartbreak the hand of life deals her, she keeps on keepin’ on, showing us that attitude is everything, and if we keep our chin up, nothing can knock us down.

I won’t be so impolite as to list her exact age, but it’s somewhere north of 80.

“Go ahead,” she says. “What’s the difference if people know how old I am?”

Okay, she turns 83 this Tuesday. 

“When some people findout your age, they want to put you in a box,” she admits, “but then you think, I’m too old to matter. They’re going to think what they will, that’s their problem, so what?”

And yet, despite being an octogenarian, she looks at least 10 years younger. This, despite the loss of an adult child, a daughter, in recent years, for whom she helped care for, in heartbreaking fashion, for many years prior to her death, followed in close tandem by the loss of her beloved husband, Robert, to whom she had been married for just shy of 60 years. Those sorts of losses would drop most of us to our knees for the knockout blow. Force a lot of us to simply give up and retire to our private quarters and pray for a quick end to our misery. Over the years, I’ve seen a number of people go down in similar circumstances, simply give up on life. Or at least the love of it. But not Nedra.

She’s been in more organizations than I can list, has been involved in more community events and functions than I can name, has been showered with more accolades than I have room to include in this column, and in between all of that, has found time to serve as both president of FUTURO McAllen and the McAllen Heritage Center.

When she’s not engaged in civic functions, she travels all over the place, visiting family located in far-off places, including three children in Florida, Idaho and northern California. She’s been to Japan, and she still loves to ride on the back of a Harley.

This week, her birthday falls on Tuesday.

“It’s the firstone when I won’t have family around,” she says, “so I decided to throw myself a birthday party (at a local restaurant) and invite friends and others who share a birthday in June. I won’t be dancing on the tables. But I’ll be dancing in the aisles.”

So what is her secret to life and overcoming the loss of not only a child but the loss of her soul mate, her husband, as well?

“Well, I’m not going to tell you that it doesn’t get very lonely at times,” she says. “You take it one day at a time. But what you do is concentrate on the good times. You remember all the fun times you had together. Don’t dwell on your regrets. And you always continue to look for a purpose for living. Sure, it’s tough sometimes. That’s why it’s important to remain in contact with people, with friends.”

And you think of other people.

“You still have to believe that you can make a difference in the world,” she says. “And you can’t do that if you don’t think of other people. You keep reaching out. You tell yourself that you can still make a difference (in the community in which you live), and that’s a good reason for still getting up in the morning.”

Nedra says she isn’t through with learning about life.

“I’m still trying to learn about it,” she said. But the future still brings her joy.

“What has me excited now is what I see coming from some of the young people I run into, the millennial generation. So many of them have a lot of exciting ideas (about life and how to make the world a better place) compared to my generation, it’s exciting to see.

A lifelong educator who started out teaching elementary class before earning her PhD in education and moving up the college ranks at the University of Indiana, Nedra and her husband firstcame to the RGV in 1979 while she was on a teaching sabbatical (she sat in on local reading classes, etc.).

“And we found we loved it here. The climate, the people. So we bought a small citrus grove (which the ’83 freeze killed). We became what you call Summer Texans (as opposed to Winter Texans), because of my free time from classes during the summer, which is when we would drive down (to the hundred-degree heat).”

Then in 1988, the Kinerks moved here full-time, and even after the loss of her husband and child, Nedra still calls this place home, still involved in local events. In fact, she just recently became president of the McAllen Heritage Center.

“No one else wanted the job,” she jokes, self-deprecating with regard to the many people who findher so special, worthy of respect and admiration.

“Life’s funny,” she tells me. “You tell me you turn 60 in August. My daughter turns 60 in August too. And it seems like it was only yesterday that I was turning 60. Life moves so fast.”

Indeed it does. Here’s wishing you a very happy birthday, Nedra Kinerk. You’re one of the people who make the world a brighter place.

And while I’m into birthday wishes, I should give a shout out to my buddy, WW II P-38 fighterjock R.T. “Sparky” Sparks, who turned 94 earlier this month. Still with a perfect head of hair and perfect posture, like Nedra (who also has great hair and perfect posture), R.T. keeps on keeping on, not letting his chronological age defin who he is.

In fact, just a few weeks ago after reading my Valley Nature column about the Sausage Tree, R.T. calls me up, “Gregg, you have to get over to my place. Come on, get over here.”

There are so few Sausage Trees in Texas, less than 10, but somehow or another, R.T. has one growing in his back yard. And he’s got some off-shoot of it he wants to give me as a gift. Now that’s something special.

Yep, no matter our chronological age, staying excited about life and the people around us, that must be the secret to happiness as we age.