Former Elgin cemetery superintendent turns 95

If you’re looking for Marvin Schmidt on any given day, he is usually not hard to find.

The Elgin resident, who celebrates his 95th birthday Saturday, starts his day with the same breakfast — four poached eggs, mashed potatoes and pancakes — at Ray’s Family Restaurant in Elgin.

Later he goes to Bluff City Cemetery, where he worked for 30 years, to visit the graves of his wife and grandson.

Later, he returns to Ray’s, where dinner is a bit more varied than breakfast. “The owners and everyone there, they are like my second family,” he said.

Schmidt retired as superintendent of the cemetery in 1985 after he made a lasting mark by starting the Avenue of Flags tradition on Memorial Day.

“Veterans, a lot of people don’t think about what they gave,” he said. “My dad was in World War I, I had a brother and son in the service, and I had three brothers in law, all in the service.”

Schmidt has five children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and lives in the house he and his late wife bought in 1964. He has attended services at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Elgin since he was a little boy.

His dream was always to be a farmer, he said.

“I would go by Ludwig Dairy and sit on a curb and watch the horses come out with the milk wagons,” he said. “I always had a dream of owning a big ranch with horses and dairy cattle.”

He quit school at age 15 in 1933 to work on couple of local farms, then got married in 1941 and eventually started renting a 156-acre farm near Wayne.

“I farmed for eight years, then my wife wanted to move to town,” he said. “You’ve got to satisfy a woman.”

That’s when he got the cemetery job in 1955, first part-time and then full-time two years later.

“I was kind of nervous because I never had much to do with people on a farm. I didn’t know what to say to them,” he said. “Then I learned I would just listen to them. I would let them tell me about their problem and take it from there.”

Over the years, he buried more than 500 war veterans, and more than 3,000 people overall. “I learned about the poor people, rich people, good people, bad people.”

Elgin Mayor David Kaptain said Schmidt was his first boss when Kaptain was a teenager and worked at the cemetery for three years.

“We had kind of a group of rough kids. His job was to herd us and make sure we got our work done,” Kaptain said. “His goal was to make (the cemetery) look as good as it could by Memorial Day.”

Schmidt said his health was pretty good until the last year or so. Still, he never thought he’d make it to 90, much less to 95.

One of his secrets is a private tradition he started after the death of his grandson eight years ago, he said.

“Every morning when I get up, the first thing I say is, ‘Thank you God for the light of day. Thank you God for the day. And thank you God for all your loving care.”

Schmidt’s 95th birthday party starts at 2 p.m. Saturday in his back lawn at 16 Allen Drive, Elgin. There will be a DJ, games and plenty of food. Anyone who knows Schmidt is welcome to show up.

“I’m inviting everyone!” he said.