Farming and family

At 89 years old, George Lee Horn still has two passions — family and farming.

Both go back to his upbringing.

He was the second-youngest of six children born to William Harrison Horn, a farmer, and Hazel Marie Horn. And he and his siblings were regular help around the family’s rural Jay County farm.

The need for their assistance expanded when he was a teenager after their father suffered strokes caused by high blood pressure.

“My junior and senior year in high school, I would milk the cows and feed the pigs then go to school," recalled Horn.

The roots of his ever-expanding family also began to grow during his teenage years.

Attending Pennville schools, Horn had been a student alongside Elnora Landon for virtually his entire life. In high school, she became more than a classmate.

They started dating and fell in love, getting married in December 1950, the same year they both graduated from Pennville High School.

Now, sitting in his room at Miller’s Merry Manor, Horn shares story after story about their five children — Gary, Linda, Dennis, Brian and Cheryl — and their children and their children.

“I didn’t count in the last year, since I didn’t see them all at the same time, but I know it’s well up in the 30s, from kids, to grandkids, to great-grandkids,” said Horn. “You can’t imagine how time flies.”

From helping out on the family farm as a youngster with his siblings, Horn moved on to a career in the fields of his own. Shortly after getting married, he began his operation on 200 acres.

It wasn’t his only career.

After 25 years of farming, Horn moved on to driving semis. He continued that work for a dozen years before retiring. Or so he thought.

His retirement was cut short when a friend who drove a tour bus for singer/songwriter Bill Gaither offered him a position. So, he was on the road again.

Horn traveled across the country every Wednesday through Saturday for three months each spring and fall. He visited Miami, San Diego, Washington state and Maryland, and a long list of stops in between.

But, really, he never left farming.

Not surprisingly, it was his other passion — family — that kept him going.

Even after he stopped his own operation to move into driving, Horn continued to help with his son’s farm.

“When I was home, I would be on the tractor,” said Horn.

His son, Dennis, farms roughly 2,500 acres of land, a 1,150% increase from where Horn started all those decades ago.

Horn is amazed, too, by how much farming has changed since when he was young. Dennis first had a 16-row corn planter, then two of them. Then he exchanged those for a 32-row corn planter.

“Farming has gotten so big,” said Horn, who continued to help his son until he could no longer climb into the farm machinery. “Back when I started, it was a two-row corn planter. Then I got a four-row corn planter and said, ‘Boy, I really have something now.’”

Just as it was physical limitations that led him to finally give up farming, those challenges also led to a move from his longtime home.

Horn had continued to live in the house where he and Elnora had raised their family for about 10 years after her death. (She began experiencing symptoms in 2003 that would develop into Alzheimer’s disease and died Sept. 28, 2008.) His own health issues manifested with a loss of balance, leading to a move to Miller’s Merry Manor in Dunkirk.

He had just moved to a new room at the facility when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

That made life difficult for a man so focused on family. Though two of his children live in Jay County and two more live in adjacent counties, he didn’t get to have in-person conversations with them. So close, but yet so far.

“I don’t think I was out of the room, not even in the hallway, for two to three months, I suspect,” said Horn.

Still, he seems to treat the Miller’s Merry Manor staff like family. He jokes with the aids as they come and go from his room, bringing smiles to their faces.

“This is the ideal place,” he said. “You can’t beat it. They are so good.”

“I wish … I could thank the girls in here for everything they do …”

And even when they couldn’t see him, family members were always sending Horn new photos for the electronic picture frame that sits on his dresser. It rotates through slide after slide of images of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

As they change, he’s more than happy to sit back and tell stories about the two things that have shaped his life — farming and family.