Friends and Neighbors: Maida Gotfrey

With an armor of strength and perseverance garnered from tragedies she has endured throughout her life, Maida Gotfrey, chooses to keep moving forward by serving others in her community and surrounding communities.

Gotfrey was born on the Spohn farm and ranch homestead, established in 1886 in Oshkosh, Nebraska, where she said many family members were born. The rich history surrounding the old homestead began with Gotfrey's great-great-great-grandfather, William Spohn.

As a resident of Garden county, Spohn was marked as one of the pioneers of what was, at that time, still a part of Cheyenne county. He took up land and instituted the development of a productive farm and was, foremost, a developer of civic and industrial progress for the area he settled. Spohn was revered as one of the representative agriculturists and stock-growers in this section of the Nebraska Panhandle at that time in the late 1800's.

Gotfrey's family ancestry, through the Spohn family, was founded in the colonial ear of our national history. William's father, Philip Spohn, was the first to come to America from Switzerland and served as a soldier of the Continental Line in the Revolutionary War, under the command of General George Washington.

Growing up on the farm, Gotfrey was raised working hard and having a lot of responsibilities from the very start.

She states that her family moved to Kimball in 1950, when working in the oilfields seemed to be the popular thing to do. She attended school here and graduated in 1960. She then met and married her husband of now 55 years, Jim. During the first ten years of their marriage, Gotfrey explains that her husband worked in the oil trade; first as a roughneck making $1.67 and hour, then later advancing to a drill hand where he made $2.10 an hour.

"We both really enjoyed it," Gotfrey said of the oilfield business. "Jim and I both were farm kids, so we never got to do anything. We learned a lot of the world."

The couple moved with the oil, as many did, from Kimball, to Rapid City, S.D., to Mohall, North Dakota and back to the Kimball area again – where the couple felt "at home."

When they settled back in Kimball County (Dix), they had four of children, Loran, Paul, Laura and Johnny.

Tragedy struck, she shared, in the softer, more sober tone of loss, in 1972 the heating furnace of the family's home blew up. The house caught fire and two of their children, Laura and Johnny, lost their lives that day.

The couple's youngest son, Aaron was born the following year and all three boys, Loran, Paul and Aaron, grew to graduate from high school, get married and have children of their own.

Tragically, after losing his own son at the age of six, Gotfrey's son, Paul, lost his own life three months later. She explains that in life we have no control over hardships, that "you just have to get back up, pull up your big girl panties, and move on." She also adds that the blessings of grandchildren help her to move forward, and bring her joy.

Gotfrey worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant at the Kimball Hospital for twenty two years, has several certificates, but lacks just one semester of school to receive her R.N. degree. She enjoyed the other nurses and staff that she worked with over the years, and said they would also spend fun time together beyond the hospital walls.

"I also really liked working with Dr. Plate, and he was really good to me," she explains, "but, Dr. Shamberg? He didn't like me and I didn't like him."

She said one day when they were working together, Dr. Shamberg leaned in and said to her, "It looks like you're not going anywhere and neither am I, so we might as well just get along with each other," she explained smiling.

Eventually, Gotfrey bought and ran the cafe in Dix, currently the D&B Cafe, for a little over a year before she moved on to run The Sundry in Potter for eight years before health concerns took her out of the workforce for some time.

"I don't vegetate very well. I had to be doing something – and besides, I really enjoy visiting and spending time with people in this community," she explains. "I really like Potter. It's a good community, a strong community. They want their community to thrive. They work hard to make it a good community."

Gotfrey doesn't find much time for vegetating, currently she owns and runs Maida's Mini Mart, in what used to be the Potter Grocery and she bakes pies and cinnamon rolls on request.

The small community store, not only offers grocery store items, but cooked meals, craft items from local crafters, and lots of hometown friendly conversation.