I had the extraordinary privilege of knowing my father for over 78 years. Not many fathers live to be 106. Waldo McBurney was born Oct. 3, 1902, near Quinter, Kan., just a few weeks after his family had moved from a sod house into their new frame house. They moved to Sterling, Kan., when he was 14, where he finished high school and spent two years at Sterling College. After graduating from Kansas State Agricultural College (now Kansas State University) in 1927, he taught vocational agriculture in Beloit, Kan., for three years. That was followed by 17 years as a county agricultural extension agent—in Beloit until 1941, and then in Hill City until 1948. He became general manager of Midwest Cooperatives in Quinter for three years before becoming self-employed. Seed cleaning, disk sharpening, beekeeping, and income tax preparation gave him a good variety of activities. He gave up income tax preparation at age 75, then disk sharpening, then seed cleaning at age 91, and, finally, the bees were sold when he was 105. Another man who operated a seed cleaner, but sold it, said, “It takes the stamina of a young man to run a seed cleaner.” Dad always said he couldn’t find anything in the Bible about retiring. He passed away July 8, 2009. Here are some of the things I learned from my father.

His Love of Growing Things

From the time he was a boy he loved to garden, and he continued to garden right up to the year he died. He kept his garden clean of weeds and made long, neat, straight rows containing over 30 different fruits and vegetables. He designed an underground tile irrigation system that was very effective in gardening in Western Kansas. When he was county agricultural agent, he supervised the making of many thousands of these tiles for gardeners around the county. His love of gardening was passed on to me and resulted in a state 4-H garden championship. For many years I have grown a lot of the vegetables our family uses.

He also loved to raise animals. We have a 1920 newspaper clipping with a picture of him as a teenager with two large pigs he grew as a member of the Capper Pig Club. The Pig Club was sponsored by Arthur Capper, publisher and long-term senator from Kansas.

During the “dirty thirties” he helped some of the farmers to survive by switching from cattle to sheep, since sheep could better survive on the sparse vegetation that grew during the drought. One year we were involved in a project with about 3,000 sheep, complete with a sheepherder that took care of the flock. We lost money, but that too was a learning experience.

He encouraged me in growing chickens, then turkeys, and eventually beef cattle. The turkeys were a joint project between my father and me involving about 600 turkeys per year, as well as a laying flock and a hatchery. This also resulted in a state 4-H championship.

His Zest for Living and Commitment to a Healthy Lifestyle

Dad’s reply to those who would ask what he considered to be the best age in life was, “Whatever age I am is the best age.” When he turned 40, he quoted the saying, “Life begins at 40.” He used to tell people that in order to live a long life a person needed to choose his parents carefully. He was honored in Washington, D.C., as America’s Oldest Worker when he was 104. Shortly after that he appeared on the national TV show Jimmy Kimmel Live in Hollywood. When Jimmy Kimmel asked him how long he wanted to live, he replied, “Whatever the Lord gives me.”

He loved music and could often be heard whistling a merry tune as he walked down the street or worked in his garden. He often sang around the house, and for many years he served as a precentor in the Quinter RP Church. He learned to play the harmonica as he drove back and forth to visit my mother before they were married. On at least two occasions he gathered a group of young people and formed a harmonica band, which he taught to play three-part music. That was when I learned to play the harmonica.

His interest in nutrition began when his father had a couple of strokes when he was only in his 50s. After a few months of treatment by his brother, Dr. Reed McBurney, in California, his father came home with instructions to eat lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grain cereals and beans. He lived to be 88.

Running was Dad’s activity for keeping fit. He worked out with the cross-country team at Kansas State, although he was not on the team. When I was in high school I had to work hard to keep up with him in the quarter mile. He returned to distance running when he was 65 and later began running races. He jogged in 26 states and ran races in 14 states, Canada, England, and Puerto Rico, winning many gold medals and setting a few U.S. and world records. In addition to races at all distances from 100 meters to 10 miles, he did race walking and field events such as high jump, long jump, triple jump, shot put, discus, and javelin. He continued to drive his car until just a few weeks before his death. His last major trip was to Colorado Springs, a distance of 270 miles each way, when he was 103.

He enjoyed public speaking and was in much demand in the last few years in schools, churches, and civic clubs. He appeared on three nationwide television programs. He gave the commencement address at Colby Community College, with about 2,500 in attendance, when he was 105.

His Commitment to Excellence

In whatever my father did, he tried to do his best. He did a lot to build the 4-H programs when he was a county agricultural agent. While at Hill City he received the distinguished service award of the National County Agents Association at the banquet of their annual convention in Chicago. One of the 4-H Clubs he worked with while in Hill City was in Nicodemus, a black community dating from Civil War days. One of their leaders told him how much she appreciated the fact that he made sure the group’s young people could participate fully in all 4-H activities. One time at a summer 4-H camp the activity of the day was to go swimming in a pool in a nearby town. At first, the pool manager would not permit the black young people to swim, but my father insisted that our group wanted them to swim with us, so he relented. This was in the 1940s before the Civil Rights Movement.

The Priority of Spiritual Things

My father grew up in a pastor’s home and never departed from the principles he learned there. He never missed church and made family worship a regular practice. A well-marked Bible attested to the time he spent in God’s Word. I never heard him utter a swear word or tell an off-color joke. He never knew the taste of liquor or tobacco.

Though he was a lifelong member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, either in Quinter or Sterling, his work for many years kept us out of bounds of the RP Church. He became concerned that we were not getting what we should from the church we were attending, so he began searching for a way to get back in the vicinity of an RP Church. He finally found work in Quinter in 1948 and lived there the rest of his life. He was elected an elder in Quinter and served for 57 years. He was 95 when he last served as a delegate to Synod but continued to be active in presbytery and session until he was 105.

His Belief in the Sovereignty of God

My father took great comfort in the truth of God’s sovereignty, especially when faced with the loss of loved ones. He and my mother read together from A. W. Pink’s book, The Sovereignty of God in the final weeks before her death from leukemia in 1960, and it was a great help in preparing them for the event of death. In speaking of her death at his 90th birthday, he said, “I decided that if it was all right with God to take her, it had to be all right with me.” He wrote in his book, My First 100 Years! A Look Back from the Finish Line, “Some of the common emotional feelings at the time of death are shock, denial, anger, depression and guilt. By my recognition of God’s sovereignty, I escaped these, for the most part. I trust God to do all things well, even if I can’t understand how He will do it.”

After 30 years of marriage to my mother, Irene Spear, my father was blessed with another wife, Vernice Chestnut Forman, for 47 years. Along with her came three stepsons in addition to the three children he already had. God is good! And, having been blessed by a father like Waldo McBurney, God has been very good to me.

—Ken is a ruling elder at First (Beaver Falls, Pa.) RPC. He is a retired minister who served in RPCNA congregations in Portland, Ore.; Denison, Kan.; and Almonte, Ont.

R. Waldo McBurney: Beekeeper/Author

Excerpts from the tribute article for his America’s Oldest Worker award, 2006

Waldo McBurney began life in a sod house on a farm near the small town of Quinter in far western Kansas, and experienced all the special joys of life in the early 1900s: a refrigerator that required cutting ice from a pond, a handle-powered washing machine (usually powered by young Waldo) that replaced his mother’s washboard, pumping water and carrying it into the house, the first family car (a 1917 Dodge) and, of course, a work week that was 10 hours a day, six days a week.

The McBurney children walked a mile and half to their one-room schoolhouse and often checked their trap lines (skunk furs could bring $1.50 each) on the way. After getting a good educational foundation from dedicated teachers, Mr. McBurney went on to college and…then embarked on a nearly 25-year career in agriculture, including three years teaching, 17 years as a county agriculture agent in Kansas, and three more years working for the Midwest Cooperative in Quinter.

It was then that Mr. McBurney decided to join his love of agriculture with a desire for entrepreneurship. He combined seasonal businesses…and beekeeping into more than 40 years of self-employment. Though some of these ventures were dropped at various times, beekeeping and the subsequent sale of honey became his most active business, and in the last few years he maintained as many as 100 colonies.

You might think all his business ventures would keep him quite busy, but Mr. McBurney found time for another passion, running. Always physically active, beginning with 60-hour work weeks on the farm and continuing with hauling 60-pound beehives, Mr. McBurney, at the age of 65, decided to take up long-distance running. Spurred on by a lifelong interest in health and nutrition, and motivated by a book he read on aerobics, he decided to turn his jogging hobby into an active training regimen. After 10 years of practice, he began to enter races, and for 25 years entered competitions and won numerous medals all over the country. At age 80 he set a Kansas state record for the 10-mile run for runners his age (a record he still holds), and went on to set records in long jump, discus and shot put into his 90s and 100s at the Senior Olympics and World Masters.

In addition to his beekeeping, Mr. McBurney is a published author and regularly markets his book My First 100 Years! from his downtown office in Quinter. The book not only provides his fascinating life story but shares his wonderful insights into nutrition, exercise, and positive living and thinking. For example, he thinks genes are important, but not everything. He says, “Lifestyle is the more important factor. We don’t get to choose our parents, but we select our lifestyles. Both my parents died of strokes, so I have lived defensively against that trouble.” What does he say about work? “Hard work didn’t hurt me—it helped.”

At age 104, Mr. McBurney is considering slowing down a bit. He’s reduced the number of beehives, and doesn’t run races anymore. But there is no way that he will just sit on the sidelines doing nothing and worrying about the future. A devout man, he says, “Worry shortens life and makes life miserable. It comes from a lack of trust in God. The easiest way to shorten one’s life is to do nothing.”