Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

A Worland woman achieved two milestones this month, turning 90 on Oct. 11, and then being the first inductee into the Washakie County Library Foundation Wall of Fame.

Mary Alice Hinkel, former fourth-grade teacher at South Side Elementary and former Washakie County Library Board member and Washakie County Library Foundation Board member, was presented with a plaque at the Friends of the Library dinner Oct. 22. The plaque will hang at the library in Worland as the start of the Foundation's Wall of Fame.

Presenting the plaque was Foundation Treasurer Bonnie Hefenieder, who said Hinkel, as a member of both boards and a long-time member of the Friends of the Library "has been interested in the library long before I knew her. She spent a lot of hours in time and effort to help the library. She has a wealth of knowledge and memory that we miss on the (Foundation) board."

Hinkel, sitting in her home on Culbertson Avenue, said after 25 years serving on the foundation board, she decided it was time for other people to serve.

"I couldn't do what I wanted to do," Hinkel said, noting at 90, while still able to much, she just can't do as much as she used to be able.

She got involved in the library after retiring from teaching, teaching fourth grade at South Side for 21 years. Hinkel said what she enjoyed most about teaching was that "every class was different. It wasn't the same thing over and over."

She said she met her husband Everett at the Wisconsin State Fair where she had been working as an extension agent. They married in 1949 and she moved to Worland. Everett passed away in 1983.

The couple had five children - Joanne and Patty, who both live in Boise; David of Billings, Bob of Crescent City, Calif., and Mark of Worland. All five were in attendance at Hinkel's 90th birthday celebration earlier this month. Hinkel also has seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

It was after the children were all in school that Hinkel decided to go back to work. She was eight credits shy of getting a degree to teach elementary education so a few summer classes and she went to work at South Side, just a short jaunt from her home.

She said she took off about a year before volunteering at the library. She said she and a friend decided it was "wiser to give money to support the library (through the Friends of the Library) than to buy books and donate them. Your money goes further."

But, while she is "retired" again as a foundation board member, she is still active in helping others, sewing bibs and burps for the hospital auxiliary, even though she's not a member.

She also enjoys quilting and making pillows, pot holders and blankets. And, she keeps updated on her family out of town through email on her home computer and Facebook on her tablet. As for social media, Hinkel said, "I don't do anything except look (at what others post)."

"I also enjoy the freedom to read whatever I want to read," Hinkel said, noting she remains a faithful patron of the library

Hinkel said she was surprised with the honor last week. "I had been asked for a photo but I wasn't sure what they wanted it for," she said.

As for the other milestone of turning 90, Hinkel said the secret to longevity, according to her children, "They said it's good genes." He mother was 91 before she passed and one brother was 99, just shy of turning 100.