KNYSNA NEWS - Hanna Oberholzer (88), a resident at Loeriehof Old Age Home, Upper Town, Knysna, mends and alters the clothes of staff at the home, and makes colourful woollen dolls for children in hospital "who don't have anything to play with".
Other undertakings fill her active day.
She modestly says she isn't an artistic person but the beautifully structured, intricate, soft, textured dolls, and the challenging alterations she makes, suggest otherwise.
"I'm a plain person who went to Nylstroom (Limpopo town now called Modimolle) Hoërskool, got my matric, and went to tech to learn typing. I work with my hands."
In 2000, she had moved to the home from Groblersdal, Limpopo, where her husband, Jan, died. She, with the help of another woman, cared for him "when he had Parkinson's (disease), which became Alzheimer's".
Jan was "a God's man, a people's man, a good man". She met him on her parents' farm near the town of Ellisras (now Lephalale) in Limpopo.
He owned the neighbouring farm, ran a garage, Jan Oberholzer Motors, in the town, and she worked as a secretary at a high school there for 15 years.
Jan was laid to rest in then Ellisras, and "the church was so full there was hardly any room for me, which showed how well respected he was".
Ten years before she married Jan, her first husband, Jos Bezuidenhoudt, died.
"That is a sad side of my life. We were married for four years, and I was seven months' pregnant when he left for work on a Monday, and never came back - he died in a car accident."
They met while he was working for a state company in Pretoria, where she worked as a typist. They were both 27 years of age when he died. "So young," she says.
She named their daughter Jos, "she has no other first names". Her daughter had retired to Plettenberg Bay.
When she married Jan, with whom her parents had socialised before she met him, he had been a widower for about 18 months, raising three young sons on his own.
Hanna points to a well-made children's table and chairs in her lounge. "Jan gave it to me to say, 'Thank you for what you did for my children.'"
She had four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, one of her four sisters had died - and the three now lived in Pietermaritzburg, Worcester and Hartenbos, which falls under Mossel Bay municipality.
Hanna, who enjoys living at the home, is lithe and energetic. "I didn't eat the right food, I didn't do the right exercises, and it's only by the grace of the Lord that I'm so healthy."
She adds: "The most important part of my life is trying to live like a child of God. My whole life is around the Lord."
‘We bring you the latest Garden Route, Hessequa, Karoo news’
