WARSAW — Some people just won’t slow down. To confirm that precept, witness the life of octogenarian Alice Surface Keirn of Warsaw.

Alice Surface Keirn, left, frames herself for a photo with her sister-in-law, Marie Keirn Smuck, 102, and granddaughter Janelle Keirn Rhoades. The photo was snapped at Keirn’s 80th birthday party at the VFW in Warsaw. (Photo provided).

Case in point: on her 80th birthday in July, Keirn ventured zip lining at a zoo in Grand Rapids, Mich. “My sister came in from Arizona. We both crossed it off our bucket lists.”

Keirn retired four years ago after a 45 1/2-year career at Creighton Brothers in Warsaw, half of the company’s 90-year existence.

She worked the last nine years in the main office. Before that she worked on the company’s hog farm. “I say I was a midwife, taking care of the sows and baby pigs.”

She lives alone in Warsaw and mows her own yard. She hasn’t let retirement allow her to languish in a sedentary lifestyle.

“I wasn’t made to sit at home,” she said. “A rocking chair is not within my definition. I am afraid to slow down; I might not start up again.”

Keirn’s litany of involvements include:

• President of the Mentone Alumni Association. She helped write a recently published book on the history of the high school. “The book starts with the first graduating class in the 1880s and runs up to 1974, but we included the class of 1975 when five schools merged into Tippecanoe Valley High School.”

Keirn “helped contact people, did a lot of research, tracked down photos and wrote some articles on the different classes. I talked to a lot of people and they told me stories.”

• Assistant treasurer of Kosciusko County Extension Homemakers. “I help extension homemakers with our quilt raffle for the Kosciusko County fair, getting tickets out, getting money in and setting up the display.”

• Member of the Kosciusko County Historical Committee. Keirn volunteers in the genealogy department of the historical museum in the old jail in Warsaw. She clips and scans obituaries into the computer after verifying gravestone locations in the county’s cemeteries.

• Member of Bell Aircraft Museum in Mentone. She is helping set up the Mentone History Museum inside that museum.

• Active in various capacities with the Harrison Center Church, “an independent country church between Mentone and Warsaw.”

• Attending “two groups of ladies who eat out each month. We support each other. One group goes out to eat and then comes to my house to play cards.”

• Quilting in her basement family room. “This past winter I made quilts for two granddaughters who got married. This next year three of my great-granddaughters will be getting married. I have material for all three quilts and have cut the blocks for one and am starting to piece them together.”

• Traveling, especially on annual trips since 2001 with her sisters. In June they visited the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Ky.

Previous excursions included two trips to NASCAR races in Arizona, a hot air balloon ride in Arizona, visiting Big Bend National Park in Texas, attending the world’s largest hot air balloon festival in Albuquerque, N.M., going to the Grand Canyon by steam train and cruising the Apache Trail in Mesa, Ariz., in a Mustang convertible.

Keirn married a 35-year-old widower with four children when she was a 17-year-old high school senior. They had one child together. “I say he raised six kids because he raised me, too.” He passed away in 2001.

She advised other retirees, “there are lots of opportunities for seniors. They just have to get out of the house to begin with.”