Meet Mer: Iowa Farm Boy to The High Seas

Mer from American House Johnson City didn’t stop driving until he was 102. He claims not to know the reason for his remarkable health and longevity as he approaches his 104th birthday. He simply shrugged and said: “All I know is you got to mind your own weaknesses and stay out of trouble as best you can. That’s about the size of it as far as I can tell.”

His humility and modesty may be attributed to his upbringing.

“I grew up on a dairy farm near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My dad was a farmer and his parents before him had a large fruit farm. We had a dairy farm with cattle, horses, pigs and all that. We had to stop and count our blessings once in a while, but our days on a farm started at four o’clock in the morning, seven days a week, or eight if we could find another one.”
Mer was eight years old when he began milking up to 10 cows every day. This was before they had milking machines.

“It was all by hand and I guess as I got older there was a little performance to it,” he said. “I took care of the cows morning and night.”

Mer had four sisters and attended a now famous grade school called Stony Point. It was a one-story, wood-framed building built in the 1800s in the countryside where there was very little traffic. Mer loved his old grade school so much he returned to Iowa two years ago to buy the building, but someone beat him to it. When Mer finished grade school, he and his classmates had to go to school in a county building. Mer didn’t go off to college as he was running a sawmill on the family farm at the time.

“We had a lot of oak trees on the farm. We sawed the trees and cut them up and made railroad ties. All by hand.”

With World War II looming, Mer decided to sign up to join the U.S. Navy.

“I made a lot of water trips during the war,” he said. “I was on battleships, cruisers and PT boats and basically went back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean on convoy duty to supply the troops.”

He said it took about 12 days to make the trip from one side of the ocean to the other. Quite the new adventure for a young man who had never seen the ocean before. A few of Mer’s war stories include helping supply the Normandy invasion and being on the same ship that took President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Near the end of war, Mer stayed on in the Navy for a while to work on radar in Hawaii. When he finally left the Navy after five years of service, Mer returned home to the farm in Iowa where his father and mother were still living.

He met his future wife, Mildred, in 1951 and they had one daughter, Mary. His daughter became a commercial pilot and captain at United Airlines. Mary retired two years ago after 30 years of flying.

After his stint in the Navy, the logical next move for the boy who grew up on a dairy farm was to go into the ice cream business. It took him to Tennessee, where he owned and operated six Dairy Queen franchises for the next 34 years.

Mer has now been at American House for five years.

“American House offers a kind of lifestyle I’ve never had before. I have everything you could ever need. Sandra (Life Enrichment Director Sandra Birchfield) is a dear lady and she spoils me around here quite a bit. I love it here at American House and I’m not going anywhere.”

We all have a story. A story that taught us something, changed us and helped define who we are. Our seniors have amazing stories that hold a wealth of wisdom. At American House, your next chapter is waiting to be written. We’re here to help you write it. Your way.