Jerry Loker, a 79-year-old man from Keenes, Illinois has lived quite the life.  Loker says that when he graduated high school in 1957, the first thing he did was to go out and buy a new car, the first new car he’d ever bought, at the whopping price of $2,100 dollars.  After this, he quit his job at the local feed store (which is now Barnard’s Soil Service) and went to work for the United States Postal Service. He worked in Chicago, IL and sorted mail at the airport.  He decided that he wasn’t made for the Chicago life. On his way home from Chicago, he swung by Decatur to pick up his high school sweetheart, Margie who was working there, took her back home to little old Keenes, and married her on November 29, 1957.  “It was quite a week that week, we had the wedding the day after Thanksgiving, and the day before Thanksgiving was her birthday.” The two were married in the Friendly Zion Baptist Church in Aden, IL, where she was born and raised.

After the two were married, they moved to Mt. Vernon, IL and lived in a two-room apartment where he worked for a logging and sawmill company.  He helped log the forest that once sat under Rend Lake. After he worked as a logger for a few years, he moved back to his hometown of Keenes and worked at his dad’s grocery and service station.  They sold gas and groceries and fixed tires and other things. Soon, they moved from Keenes to the Harmony-Marlow crossroads where Jerry ran his own store for a year just like his dad’s.  After running a store, Jerry again moved back to the town of Keenes until he got enough money to buy a 13-acre farm. He traded the new car that he’d bought years ago for a tractor and began to take up farming as well as take on jobs to keep extra cash flow coming in and pay off debt.  

After establishing himself as a farmer, he bought a 160-acre farm where he currently still lives today.  He began to farm more seriously as a profession and moved on from renting ground to only farming his own ground.  When he moved to his new farm, he farmed cattle and grain, but later gave up the cattle when he built a brand new house in 1978.  While on this farm, Jerry bought new equipment and tools. Jerry said that he decided to be a full-time farmer because he liked the independence of it and being his own boss.  

Jerry and his wife Margie of 61 years currently reside on the farm he bought new in 1970 and have three children and multiple grandchildren.  Jerry chose to retire early at 50 years old with no debt owed on anything he had. He decided to do this because he didn’t want to go into debt again, and decided he would rent his ground out for money as well as his wife’s income as a postmaster at the local post office.  When asked what he did after retirement, his answer was: “I did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.” If Jerry could give one piece of advice, it would be: “If you want to get ahead in life, Invest, Invest, Invest. When you do this you’ll accumulate and then you always have a backup.”  So there you have it folks: the brief, shortened version of the life of Jerry Loker.