Jane Rosser Warfel can tell you a thing or two or three about Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
She has called this community home all her life.
“I used to call Fayetteville a one-horse town when I was young,” Warfel, 102, says. “Then, there was a time when it was bustling. There was Belk-Hensdale, Fleishman’s Big Store and The Capitol. There were drugstores and jewelry stores.”
Still, she can see the late John Hensdale standing at the front door of the Belk-Hensdale department store along Hay Street.
“Mr. Hensdale always was greeting you,” she said. “He knew everybody in town. He meant a lot to Fayetteville.”
She remembers when a downtown movie ticket was a dime, and a quarter when you were 12 and older.
“We tried to stretch that quarter,” she said with a smile Jane Warfel just couldn’t hide.
She recalls taking the city bus for dinner dates at downtown restaurants with Joseph M. Warfel, the Pope Air Force Base airman from western Pennsylvania, who was smitten with the country girl from down Cedar Creek way.
“We married sometime in 1943,” Jane Warfel said.
They raised three children–Joseph Rosser Warfel, now 81; William James “Bill” Warfel, 73; and Katherine Jane Warfel Thomas, who was born in 1961.
Life was good at the brick home off Cedar Creek Road near Jane Warfel’s Victorian architectural homeplace with wrap-around porches.
December 27, 1923
Jane Rosser was born December 27, 1923, the second child and only daughter to James Kelly Rosser, a World War I veteran, and Lou Kinlaw Rosser, a schoolteacher at Massey Hill School.
“It was my mother’s home where I grew up,” Warfel said. “It was a very quiet place. When I was a little girl, the road wasn’t paved. You could tell a car was coming when you saw a cloud of dust. We would run out and watch the cars go by. We had to dust our house every day.”
If it wasn’t an automobile, Warfel says, there were horse buggies and mules pulling carts.
“I was a teenager,” she said, “before they ever paved that road.”
Jane Warfel can see those days of yesteryear with such fondness.
“We played hide-and-seek and dodgeball outside,” she said. “I just remember it being a very pleasant childhood. I remember climbing trees. We did all kinds of crazy things.
“We were very poor, but we didn’t know it.
“The winters were pretty hard before we got electricity,” she said. “That was wonderful. We just hit a switch and the lights came on. I must have been about 10 or 12 when we got electricity, but we only had one light in each room. Then came stoves and refrigeration. We just had a small ice refrigerator. Then we could have ice and keep our food cold. It was really wonderful.”
The U.S. stock market crash of October 29, 1929, led to the Great Depression and Warfel remembers her father died at age 30 in 1930.
“I was 6 or 7 or 8 when the Great Depression came along,” Warfel said. “Seems my uncles came by and talked with my mother and told her everything had gone wrong. It didn’t seem to affect me, but I was very aware it was a depression. We were very poor and had help from the county, $20 a month, I think it was.”
Along Her Way
With the outset of World War II in 1939, the Great Depression was at an end, as the surge in national defense spending and war production created millions of jobs for those who had been out of work for so long.
She graduated from Stedman School in 1940 and headed to Louisburg College in Wake County.
“They had a good business school,” Warfel said.
She returned to Fayetteville in 1941 and two years later married the persistent airman in South Carolina.
“We eloped,” Warfel said.
He was handsome in that military uniform, and his country bride became a homemaker who could cook and bake with the best of them down on Cedar Creek Road.
“Everybody loved my corn on the cob, and everybody loved my applesauce,” she said about her family. “Everybody loved my peach cobbler and my apple crisp. I made those real often. I used to make a cake every week. Chocolate cake was everybody’s favorite and everybody loved my lemon cake.”
Her roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy was a dinner delight her family couldn’t resist.
Warfel began working as a secretary in 1958 for the late Ray Muench, who was general manager of the Fayetteville Public Works Commission.
“They call them administrative assistants now,” she said. “I worked for him as long as he was the manager. I took early retirement in 1984.”
Her husband died at age 73 on December 10, 1988.
Along life’s way, Jane Warfel always had a yearning to tell her life story, and she did at 100 in her autobiography, Down A Country Road: A Collection of Stories, which chronicles four generations beginning with the Kinlaw family and their move in 1908 to Cedar Creek Road.
“I did it by hand on a yellow legal pad,” Warfel said. “I would sit in my comfortable chair and write. Then I would edit the stories and type it on an electric typewriter. Quite a few stories are about my mother, and stories she told me of her as a girl growing up. Some stories are about me going to college. That was quite an event, because I had never spent more than a week from home, and I was very homesick.”
‘Oh, My Goodness …’
Today, you’ll find Jane Rosser Warfel residing at the Carolina Inn, where on December 26 and December 27 her grown children and four grandchildren celebrated her 102nd year. She also has 11 great-grandchildren.
“All my children and grandchildren came,” she said. “The people here put up tables. My daughter brought chicken and barbecue, and we had a cake. It was a two-day celebration.”
It’s not Cedar Creek Road, but the assisted living facility just off Village Drive is home.
“I feel fortunate I have a place like this where I can live,” she said. “They take good care of you and give you three good meals a day, so I feel fortunate I can be here.”
She keeps up with her favorite television shows like The Price Is Right and PBS (Public Broadcasting System) North Carolina, and Sunday mornings are for watching Hayes Barton Baptist Church telecasts out of Raleigh.
“And I’ve always tried to keep up with the news,” Warfel said. “Oh my goodness, is Trump going to lead us into war with Venezuela or several other countries? I don’t know what’s going to happen with this world today. It’s not the way I would want it to be. I don’t know what to say about it. It’s so strange, I guess you would say.”
Epilogue
No matter, Jane Warfel is hopeful that our tomorrows will be better for all.
It’s how she was raised and lived along Cedar Creek Road.
“I take each day as it comes and hope it will be a good day,” she said. “I learned to always try to look for the best in everybody. I look for the best and always expect the best in them.”
Jane Rosser Warfel can tell you a thing or two or three about Fayetteville and Cumberland County. And all of us can learn a thing or two or three from Jane Rosser Warfel along our life’s way.
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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