Managing editor
From horse and buggy to rocket ships on the moon, 106-year-old Norma Hannaford had about seen it all.
The matriarch of Hannaford Abstract & Title Company died Thursday at St. Luke Living Center.
Norma McCullough was born on a farm near Leon, moving with her family to Marion as a high school student. She graduated with the Marion High School class of 1922 and married her high school sweetheart, Roger “Mike” Hannaford, in 1927.
Mike Hannaford joined an uncle in the title business in Marion, where he worked until his death in 1949. Norma Hannaford, a wife and mother, found herself becoming a partner in her husband’s business.
“I didn’t know anything about the business,” she said in a 2006 interview.
Hannaford’s duties at that time were at home, raising the couple’s three children. In time, she did learn the ropes and she purchased an interest from her husband’s partner in 1951.
“There were some women working out of the home,” Hannaford said, but there weren’t too many who were in supervisory or ownership positions.
Hannaford remained active with the abstract business until she was 80 years old, and maintained her license for another 20 years.
The family business continues with son Bud and grandson Roger at the helm.
In 2007, reporter Larry Hatteburg featured Norma Hannaford on a KAKE television segment of “Hatteburg’s People.” In the televised program, Hatteburg interviewed Hannaford about her life and being a columnist for the Marion County Record — possibly the oldest active journalist in the state or maybe the country.
Hannaford always had a desire to write. While her three children were young, she wrote two children’s stories, which were published in magazines.
Always an avid reader, she didn’t take up the pen again until 1998, after she met a woman in a Salina nursing home who contributed to the local newspaper.
That gave Hannaford an idea.
One day, she got up the courage to approach Editor Bill Meyer about writing for the Record.
“I told Bill I would like to express my opinions on things, just for fun,” she said in a 2004 interview for the Record. “Thank goodness he took me up on it.”
Her columns appeared in the local newspaper beginning in April 1998 and covered topics that included the Titanic — the movie and the ship — ever-changing women’s fashion, teens then and now, births and deaths, civic and national topics of interest, and everything in between.
Hannaford was always proud of her family and grateful for her abundant life. She attributed her longevity to a positive attitude.
“Get involved. Stay positive. Be a good citizen and get out and vote,” she said in a 2009 interview. “Go with the flow.”
Hannaford lived in the family home on Elm Street for 82 years before moving to St. Luke Living Center a few weeks prior to her death.
In her last Random Thoughts column in the July 7 edition of the Record, Hannaford wrote about life’s unexpected turns and her resilience amid change.
“If this isn’t a kettle of fish! All at once, I have moved! Sometime, maybe, but I hadn’t planned this so soon. They say, ‘Seize the moment,’ so I do.”
And she did “seize moments” for 106 years.