'Oldest Waitress' − who served kindness as much as coffee − dies at 101

At 94, Marie Hainline worked lunch at the Bonaparte Retreat on Tuesdays and Thursdays, where she’d serve just as many jokes as she did big-as-your-face tenderloins.

I met Hainline, the unofficial Oldest Waitress in Iowa, during a weekday rush back in 2018. And over endless cups of coffee ― the Retreat is a country diner after all ― learned about this little, little woman’s big, big life.

How she wanted to go to school so badly that she’d ride a horse to class when storms or mud-caked roads threatened to keep her home. How she’d fallen in love and followed her Marine husband to California, a long way for a girl who hadn’t really left Van Buren County.

How she came home on her husband’s orders after not hearing from him for two weeks, the dauntlessness she carried along with the baby in her belly on that train back to Iowa.

How she took up the farm work when her husband had a terrible, life-altering car accident. All the ways she survived as a mother of four children who bore the burden of making ends meet.

How her brand of feminism was the power to get on with it.

I remember smaller moments, too. How she'd repeated the day’s special as "Meatloaf and Greenie Beanies." I think of her literally every time I see or smell green beans … beanies, I mean.

And how, even at 94, she loved working at the local restaurant, the Bonaparte Retreat. How she’d have worked more if the owner let her. Heck, she pulled shifts at the restaurant until the COVID pandemic forced closure.

When it was safe to go out again, she didn’t come back to work. But, at 100, she still drove her Buick into town ― some say a little too fast ― for lunch and a cuppa.

Hainline was just getting started ― right up until the end. She died Feb. 1 at age 101, the owners of the Retreat in Bonaparte, Iowa, told me in a Facebook message.

“Marie never met a stranger and assumed the best in everyone,” reads her obituary, which tells some of the same stories I heard over that lunch, but includes hobbies and non sequiturs our conversation hadn’t yet ambled to before her shift ended.

Hainline, I learned, read like a fiend and took to “self-diagnosing” minor maladies from her medical books. She loved the Cubs and the Golden State Warriors.

And she hosted Christmas Eve dinner ― complete with goodie-filled gift bags, always ensuring enough for everyone. Naturally.

“Marie nurtured, cared for and served others throughout her life,” her obituary reads.

Serve has multiple meanings here, of course. Hainline served those around her in verve, in getting started over and over again. An emotional, spiritual type of service to others she breathed as much as oxygen.

And of course she served at the Bonaparte Retreat. Posting up near the antique cash register when her tables were satiated, waiting to seat the next batch of hungry customers with a joke and a sandwich.

Marie Hainline, the Oldest Waitress in Iowa, will forever have a standing lunch reservation at the Bonaparte Retreat. Just look for the placard near the host stand, and check under the name, “Our Marie.”

Find an excerpt of Courtney Crowder’s column in the Des Moines Register, part of the Paste BN Network, below and read the full story here.

BONAPARTE, Iowa — To understand the essence of Marie Hainline, you have to feel grit.

Not metaphorical grit, but literal granules of grit.

You have to get on a highway, take twists and turns until the road turns to gravel and then to grass. Walk deep into a cornfield, so far that all you can see is yellow and green. Bend down and grab a big handful of earth. Feel the dirt fall from between your fingers.

That’s the essence of Hainline, a farm girl so connected to her community it’s as though she’s rooted to the ground. Like a perennial, she’s dependable, locals say, and always positive. She’s got enough faith to know the harvest will come in, but enough sense to know you got to put in hard work to secure the right yield. She’s utterly devoted to her family and yet fiercely independent.

At age 94, Hainline still drives her Buick fast, still acts in local theater productions and still works at the Bonaparte Retreat, where her co-workers are pretty sure she is the oldest waitress working in Iowa.

Hainline’s long life can be defined by numbers: 94 years; four kids; 10 grandchildren; 18 great-grandchildren; four great-great-grandchildren.

Or the eras she witnessed: The Depression. World War II. The Red Scare. The War on Terror.

Or, as Retreat owner Rose Hendricks offers, in the countless patrons who call to see if Marie is working before deciding whether to amble into town.

"I’ve fooled a lot of people," Hainline deadpans.

But it might be best to describe her life in the stories, and the little bits of advice, she’s picked up along the way …

Courtney Crowder, the Iowa Columnist at the Des Moines Register, part of the Paste BN Network, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. Reach her at ccrowder@dmreg.com or on X @courtneycare.