Celebrity treatment

Ilah (Ogan) Grile has been treated like a celebrity lately.

The 108-year-old woman celebrated her 90th Pennville High School reunion on Saturday. Grile’s corner of Pennville Community Gym had a line of folks waiting to connect with her, making her feel like she was on the red carpet.

Grile has an abundance of stories to share after more than a century on earth.

She sold candy door-to-door as a child. While picking up the mail in town — her parents owned a farm on about 40 acres outside of Pennville — she and her siblings would stop by Charlie and Grace Vore’s home on the way back for fresh-baked goods.

She’s not sure when her own passion for baking started, but she recalled a day as a teenager when her mother had to go to town in the middle of preparing dinner. Grile was put in charge of making a lemon pie.

“I’ll tell you, I couldn’t make pie for nothing,” said Grile, pointing out her parents never asked her to bake another one.

But she scored a winning pie recipe several years later and used it constantly. (She noted a key ingredient — lard — which she once tried to substitute with Crisco. It didn’t pan out well, she said.) Her cakes, pies and other goodies became a staple at family gatherings.

She enjoyed driving neighbors around as needed, taking them to Fort Wayne, Ohio and places in between. Grile and her husband, Willard, loved to travel, camping at various places throughout the United States, such as the Badlands National Park, Yellowstone National Park and Branson, Missouri. She recalled her first trip in 1933 when she visited the World’s Fair in Chicago. She hitched a ride to the fair on a flatbed truck owned by a friend of a friend’s father.

“There’s no wonder I knew so many people,” said Grile, recalling her former jobs.

She made a “host of friends” while trying her hand at different occupations, first starting at Ted Langlo’s shoe store in Portland before spending time at grocery stores in Montpelier and Petroleum. She also worked at Jay Garment for three years and at McDonald’s.

Grile co-owned the I&M Foodliner grocery store with her son, Mike, in Pennville for about 18 years starting in 1969.

“They had everything,” recalled local resident Sue Ann McLaughlin, who was a teenager when she first met Grile at her store. “You could go in there and get anything you needed at that time … vegetables, canned goods, meats.”

Grile is also well-known for her services at Sugar Grove Church of the Nazarene, having taught Sunday School for more than 50 years.

Rex Pinkerton, principal at Redkey Elementary, attended the church as a child. Grile taught adult classes, while her sisters taught classes for children.

“(She’s) strong in her faith,” said Pinkerton. “She was really committed to Christ and represented that well.”

Grile recalled a time as a child when her church offered a prize for the person who brought in the most flowers to decorate the worship hall. Taking advantage of her father’s farm ground, she gathered a washtub full of wild daisies. After all that effort, she said, the prize turned out to be a large lollipop.

“I expected more,” she admitted.

But Grile has always been up for challenges. She recalled once climbing a fire tower at a park in Bluffton shortly after a hospital visit.

“Anytime anybody asks me to do anything, if I thought at all I could be a part of it, I was always willing to try it, and I’ve been mostly all successful,” said Grile. “I guess I got kind of tired of people saying I can’t do this and I can’t do that and I can’t do the other. I always tried.”

Grile has gone through several surgeries throughout the years. She beat a light case of polio as well as several bouts with the flu. Recently, she’s been dealing with inflammation in her feet and legs. She recalled burning her feet as a toddler, an injury that has affected her nearly all her life. She also got caught in a steel animal trap as a child while she and her siblings were playing along a river.

Nowadays, Grile spends most of her time coloring with gel pens. She initially picked up the habit for her grandchildren, but lately folks have been bringing her frames and books to fill.

She’s also still keeping up with the Christmas cactus given to her by her mother-in-law more than 80 years ago.

“It’s still as strong as when it (first) bloomed,” she noted, pointing to the plant on her front porch.

Although she has spent some time in nursing homes, Grile currently lives in her Pennville home. Mike visits regularly. Her grandson, Jeff, spends the evenings with her. Sometimes they’ll take golf cart rides to attend church services.

“They’ve all been very good to me,” she said.

As for her friends in the community, they keep her entertained. She received 105 birthday cards for her 105th birthday. In February, she had more than 160 birthday cards when she hit 108.

“She’s always been a really special person,” said McLaughlin. “I’ve been tickled through this process … She’s humble because she doesn’t understand what the big deal is about this. She said she didn’t know why everybody was so excited, why she’s been out of high school for 90 years … she’s never been one that wanted a lot of compliments and things like that. To her, it’s just part of life.”