Brenda Kuhlman Became the School Secretary at 17. Fifty-Two Years Later, Her Grandkids Attend the Same Nebraska School.

For 52 years, Brenda Kuhlman has been the school secretary at Pope John XXIII Central Catholic School in Elgin, Nebraska, and she started when she was 17. She met her husband at the school, raised six children, and now sees her grandchildren in its halls, WOWT reported this month.

She has no end date in mind. Kuhlman told the station she will keep working as long as her health holds out.

Hired at 17, Eight Years After the Doors Opened

The school opened in 1967, eight years before Kuhlman began working there, according to WOWT. She was a student at Pope John, and The Elgin Review reported in a 2023 profile that she started in 1975, two months before she graduated from the school. WOWT describes her as the school’s administrative assistant and office manager.

The school came out of a decision by area parishes. According to the school’s own news archive, Omaha Archdiocesan School Superintendent Msgr. Roman C. Ulrich met on May 6, 1966, with 14 representatives from six parishes around Elgin to discuss building a central Catholic high school there, to be run by a corporation of those parishes. The school notes the date in its 50th anniversary coverage.

Wikipedia’s entry on the school adds that it opened in September 1967 to replace St. John’s High School in Petersburg and St. Boniface High School in Elgin. Kuhlman’s career therefore covers nearly the whole history of the building where she works.

Everything That Comes Through the Office Door

The job has never had a single description. WOWT says her duties range from managing funds to returning lost backpacks, and that she keeps scrapbooks documenting the school’s history.

The Elgin Review’s 2023 profile gave a longer list: payroll, forms, announcements, booster club work, copying, first aid for students and memos for the faculty. In her own words, it said, “It’s whatever comes in the door.” She likes to be in early, it added, before the school’s roughly 137 students and more than 20 faculty and staff arrive.

The same profile shows how the work has shifted. Kuhlman started out with shorthand, typing and administrative skills, and she said completing her coursework then meant a student could get a job. Computer technology has since changed her responsibilities. The newspaper added that her office walls are lined with family photos and other memories, and that she keeps a role in matters for the Committee for the Continuation of Pope John, along with monthly calendars.

She also spoke about what the job has given her. “So many lasting friendships start at these doors,” the Elgin Review quoted her as saying, and she described seeing the children and grandchildren of former students as a wonderful part of the work.

Today the school has about 130 students from prekindergarten through 12th grade, WOWT says, and draws them from eight surrounding parishes. The station lists communities including Raeville, Petersburg, Neligh, Clearwater and Ewing among those the students come from. The school’s own website describes programs from preschool through grade 12, with an elementary school for preschool through grade 6, a junior high and a high school.

Colleagues say the work shows. Deb Warren, a 1972 graduate and Kuhlman’s former classmate, previously served as the school’s development director. She told WOWT that Kuhlman keeps the school running like a well-oiled machine.

From School Mom to School Grandma

For many in the building, Kuhlman has been a constant. Lauren Borer, a teacher who returned to her alma mater, remembers Kuhlman from her seventh-grade year. “Brenda just became that like school mom for us,” Borer said, according to WOWT.

Now Borer’s own children are students, and the station reports that Kuhlman has become the school grandma to them. The same pattern holds in Kuhlman’s family. She raised six children south of Raeville, and some of her grandchildren attend Pope John Central Catholic now. The report does not say how many.

The role also ties the school to its own beginnings. Kuhlman is a Pope John graduate, and WOWT calls the school her alma mater. She took the office job in 1975 while still a student. Her husband, whom the station does not name, is part of that same story, since the two met at the school.

Describing what the job has meant, Kuhlman said, “It’s been my life for that many years.”

A Small Town, a Long Career and No Retirement Date

The school sits in a small place. Elgin, in Antelope County, had 717 residents at the 2020 census, according to Wikipedia. The town was platted in 1887 when the railroad was extended there, and its population peaked at 917 in both 1930 and 1970. Wikipedia also lists Elgin High School, Pope John High School and St. Boniface Elementary School among the schools in the town. The Elgin Review is the weekly newspaper that covers it, and it is the paper that profiled Kuhlman in 2023, when it said she was starting her 49th year at the school and had no plans to retire.

Nearly four years later, WOWT heard the same answer. Asked about retirement, Kuhlman said she will keep working as long as her health holds out, then joked that she would stay “or until they kick me out.”

The school’s Wikipedia page gives its address as 303 Remington Street in Elgin. Inside, the woman who handles the money, the paperwork and the lost backpacks has been doing it for more than five decades.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Ammodramus – Public domain/Wikimedia Commons