It takes a lot to flummox Edmund Fry, erstwhile proprietor of the Rose Tree Cottage teahouse in Pasadena.
Katherine Baumchen did it on Feb. 8.
The Los Angeles resident arrived at the teahouse door with four members of her family. But it was Baumchen who held sway in a pink-print blouse, black cardigan and navy skirt. After all, she was the one celebrating her 110th birthday.
“Can you imagine having a 110-year-old sitting in your room?” Fry asked. “She walked right up the steps, no walker. We have rather lavish offerings for tea, including raspberry surprise for dessert and she gobbled every single thing,” from the savories and shortbreads to a quaff of the elderflower cordial Edmund imports from the Duke of Rutland’s English estate.
And of course, she had a cup of tea, with milk and sugar, thank you very much.
A visit to Rose Tree was her birthday wish, her great-niece Anne Bonner said.
Baumchen was born on Feb. 10, 1915 in western Canada, part of the Commonwealth upon which tea is a cultural tradition. She was one of eight children who grew up in a wheat farm in the province of Saskatchewan.
“It was regular living,” she told Rev. Tom Welbers in a video interview in 2019. “We had own own pony, a buggy, we had pigs, cows, calves, chickens and geese. We had no luck with turkeys. We had lots of vegetables in the summertime.”
Ice cream was a treat enjoyed only in the winter, when ice from lakes and rivers helped freeze the confections.
A year after the Depression hit in 1929, Baumchen said her family moved to Toronto. She remembers that time for the ways her family found joy, such as weekly dances at homes where her brother played the accordion.
In 1940, at 25, Baumchen got an office job, training first on the comptometer, a key-driven mechanical calculator. That job led to a position with Standard Oil Company. Her Los Angeles story began with her older sister Marie.
“We went to Los Angeles on vacation first, in 1955,” Baumchen said. “We drove down and…
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