Beatrice Ricke, one of eleven children, was born in Spearville Kansas in 1920. Not long after she was born, her family moved to the Zenda Kansas area where she would live the rest of her life. The Great Depression caused her family to give up their farm and move into town. Beatrice was the third oldest of the eleven children. There were five boys and seven girls. Since Beatrice was one of the oldest children, she was tasked with taking care of her younger siblings quite often. One day she went to town and bought her little brother a brand new outfit. She sat him on a quilt out in the yard and took a picture of him. This picture of her “little cutie pie” has been in her wallet ever since. Beatrice’s dad was a farmer until the family was forced to give up the farm. Once they moved into town he was able to get a job with the PWA. During this job he worked on roads near Zenda. While running a horse-drawn scoop that was strapped onto his shoulders, he injured himself and cracked his ribs. This incident forced him to give up working for the PWA. After he recovered, he started working at a nearby hatchery. He then moved on to opening and running his own feed store until he died from a heart attack at …show more content…
One that she could remember was loading up the old lumber wagon with straw bales from the barn and hooking it up to the pair of horses. After that, they topped the straw bales with comforters from the house and the whole family loaded on to ride to the Christmas concert in town. The Great Depression impacted the Ricke family greatly. It taught Beatrice to “take care of what you got and make the best of it because if you didn 't, you might be in bad shape.” Waking up every morning to do chores such as feeding the cows and chickens and taking care of the garden helped instill a lasting work ethic in Beatrice. Beatrice said the Great Depression taught the family how to get by with what they