CANAAN — After graduating from eighth grade, Verna Dunn was told by a doctor that she shouldn’t attend high school due to her health.
Instead, she learned through dozens of pen pals she corresponded with all over the country and throughout the world.
Dunn was born at home on the family farm on Choate Road on Dec. 23, 1919. Earlier this month, she was presented with the Boston Post Cane for being Enfield’s oldest resident.
“I was kind of sickly so the doctor advised me not to go to high school,” Dunn said. “And here I am.”
She attended two one-room schoolhouses on Jones Hill and East Hill roads.
“I was always transported in a horse and buggy,” Dunn recalled during an interview earlier this month at the Mascoma Area Senior Center in Canaan where she still volunteers and eats lunch multiple days a week. In the winter, that changed to a “horse and sleigh. A big sled.”
The youngest of four sisters, she grew up on Sunset Hill Farm, where her father raised dairy cows and sold the milk to Hood. The farm was largely self-sufficient.
“During the Depression, we didn’t have enough money, but we had enough food,” Dunn said.
She also remembers taking the train from Enfield to Lebanon with her sisters to visit cousins. They’d collect berries to sell.
“Lots of times we’d stay and go to the movies,” Dunn recalled, which were at the Lebanon Opera House. “I liked to go to the musical ones.”
Dunn connected with her pen pals through the Boston Herald. Dunn recalled paying 35 cents for a list of names and addresses.
At one time, she corresponded with close to 100 people, one of whom, a woman living in Denmark, she wrote to consistently for about 70 years — save for during World War II when Denmark was under Nazi occupation.
During the war, Dunn helped collect iron for the war effort.
“Then we picked milkweed pods for life jackets,” she recalled. “And we saved fat to turn in.”
The farm got electricity in 1947, and Dunn remembered the thrill of being able to use an electric iron. Also as a child she rode in her father’s Model T’s. They’d regularly visit family in Goffstown and New Boston.
Sometimes she would have to manually move the windshield wipers on the vehicle.
“We never went anywhere without (getting) a flat tire,” Dunn said.
Dunn spent most of her life in Enfield and raised her two children in West Canaan near where Mascoma Valley Regional High School is now — she watched its construction before it opened in 1963. She has five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
“Well of course West Canaan made a lot of changes,” Dunn said. The sawmill and post office both closed.
“So it used to be more of an active town?” Dunn’s niece, Jan Kulig, asked during the interview.
“It was,” Dunn said.
Dunn also is a talented quilter and has made quilts for everyone in her family.
“I would say she is quite the seamstress,” Kulig said.
In addition to volunteering at the senior center, Dunn also volunteers at the thrift store at the Enfield United Methodist Church. Although she never learned to drive, Dunn has quite the active schedule and is able to rely on friends, family and public transportation to get her where she needs to go.
“She finally got an answering machine several years ago because she’s always busy,” Kulig said.
“I do. I do a lot,” Dunn replied. But that, she says, is part of living a long life. “Be active.”
Although Dunn never attended high school, she received an honorary diploma from Mascoma Valley Regional High School in 2015 in honor of her pursuit of lifelong learning.
She also received the Joseph Vaughn Award for volunteering in Grafton County in 1990 in honor of her dedication to the community.
“That was quite a surprise,” she said.
But it’s also quite fitting. Dunn didn’t let one doctor’s opinion stop her from learning; she just went about it a different way.
“I say I’m rich with friends,” Dunn said.
Editor’s note: The Senior Spotlight is an occasional feature that is part of the Sunday Seniors column in the Sunday Valley News. If you or someone you know would be interested in being featured to share your memories of life in the Upper Valley, contact Liz Sauchelli at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
Correction
Verna Dunn received an honorary diploma from Mascoma Valley Regional High School in 2015, just prior to her 95th birthday. She grew up on a farm on Choate Road in Enfield. An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect year that Dunn received her honorary diploma and misspelled the name of the road.
