America’s Oldest Worker 2006
F. Waldo McBurney, 104
Beekeeper/Author
Quinter, Kansas
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 wash board, pumping water and carrying it into the house, the first family car, a 1917 Dodge and, of course, a work week that was ten-hours a day, six-days a week.
The McBurney children walked a mile and half to their one-room school house 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 graduated in 1927 from Kansas State Agricultural College, now Kansas State University, with a degree in horticulture. He then embarked on a nearly 25-year career in agriculture, including three years teaching, 17 years as a County Agricultural Agent in Kansas, and three more years working for the Midwest Cooperative in Quinter.
It was then that Mr. McBurney decided to join together his love of agricultural with a desire for entrepreneurship. He combined seasonal businesses such as income tax preparation, disk sharpening (disks are used for soil cultivation), seed cleaning (which removes dirt, broken and shriveled kernels, and weed seeds before planting), 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 bee hives, at the age of 65 Mr. McBurney 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 running, long jump, discus and shot put into his 90s and 100s at the Senior Olympics and World Masters in New York, England and Puerto Rico.
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 of 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 bee hives, 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 ones life is to do nothing.”
