SIDNEY — Doris Deam, a resident of Landings of Sidney for almost three years, celebrated her 100th birthday on Saturday, Oct. 15. She was born on Oct. 15, 1922 and lived on a small farm in Kettlersville. Deam celebrated her birthday with friends and family at Landings of Sidney.
Deam, originally Coil, attended Sidney High School. Due to Kettlersville’s location, the family had a choice between Sidney and Houston schools. Deam’s family chose Sidney because at the time it was considered a better school. After graduating high school, Deam went to beauty school. However, beauty school did not work out for Deam because according to her she was not properly prepared. Since working as a beautician was not what life seemed to have in store for Deam, when World War II started she began working in Piqua making Norden bombsites.
After WWII, her first husband, Paul Poppe, returned home to run his family’s general store in Kettlersville that was attached to the post office. Deam worked at the store while her husband worked as post master. Deam and Poppe were married for 40 years and from the end of WWII in 1945 until Poppe retired, the two worked in the general store. Poppe and Deam had two children together which they raised in Kettlersville, Cheryl Christman and Richard Poppe.
After her first husband passed, Deam remarried to Jack Schwartz. The two were married for 20 years and had moved to Florida for a period of time. While in Florida, they bought a trailer that was later devastated by hurricane Charley in 2004. Rather than return to Ohio, the couple remained in Florida for a few more years until Schwartz passed away in 2008.
When Deam returned to Ohio, she attended a Sidney High School class reunion where she was re-introduced to Bill Deam, her third husband. The two had met originally in high school when Bill and Doris had class together. The Deams met for the second time in 2009 and they married in 2010. The couple both moved into Landings of Sidney in July of 2020 and Bill passed two years later in the summer of 2022, just shy of his 100th birthday.
Since she turned 100 this year, Doris lived through multiple historic events. A few that she could remember include the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, the end of WWII and the liberation of the internment camps in 1945, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the multiple theories on what really happened and the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first landed on the moon in 1969.
