August Senior of the Month Rebecca Huggins
Rebecca Huggins, of Blanchard, is the August Senior of the Month at Newcastle Senior Citizens Center.
She is 67 years old, but was born in Great Bend, Kansas. Huggins said when she was growing up, she moved about six times within the states of Kansas and Nebraska. She moved to the Blanchard area enticed by a marriage proposal in 1987 from the late George Huggins.
Senior Center officials said you will never meet anyone as pleasant and self-sacrificing as Rebecca.
She was born into a family of 13, but sadly at the age of nine, she along with her siblings were placed into the foster system. They were taken from school without any of their belongings and placed in a shelter home.
In the years following, Rebecca lost touch with a lot of her family as five of her older siblings were adopted by various other families.
She went on to live with two foster families before she aged out of the system. The second foster mom was a major influence in Rebecca’s life by helping her to voice her feelings in order to begin healing. After the age of 18, she began reconnecting with some of her biological family.
Huggins said 4-H and Girl Scouts gave her a lot of life skills, but her job experience came through a variety of jobs in Kansas such as Joston Yearbook Company, where she stacked books as they came out of the back end of a machine.
She also worked at a sausage packing factory, a nursing home, and a variety of restaurants. Locally, she worked at Matador’s Pepper Plant in Blanchard before retiring in 1995.
Special memories are of Christmases and dinners with family, of using the outhouses at an aunt and uncle’s farm in Nebraska, and of deer hunting on her husband’s cousin’s farm in Nebraska. Cherry pie, reuben sandwiches, and fried chicken were, and still are, her favorites in the food department.
Rebecca spends her time helping others in need, reading her Bible, doing crafts, crocheting, and going to garage sales.
She said the people in the libraries and senior centers of Newcastle and Blanchard hold a special place in her heart. She discovered the Newcastle Senior Center during the Newcastle 2018 City-Wide Garage Sale weekend. The center was serving hamburgers to the public as a fundraiser. Rebecca and her sister were in Newcastle attending garage sales and decided to stop for a burger.
She said pork chops are now her favorite meal at the center.
Rebecca wants to be remembered for loving God with all her heart, soul, and mind and her neighbor as herself because life has taught her that He is always holding her hand.
The Newcastle Senior Citizens Center invites every senior citizen in the community to join them at the center for noon meals (11:30 a.m. Monday – Friday) and to check out the opportunities for games, crafts, and fellowship.
Newcastle Senior Citizens Center is at 504 OK-130. They can be reached by phone at 405-387-2100. Meals are $5 each and include salad bar, entrée, drink and dessert.
