There’s an adage that the older one gets, the more their true core emerges.
There were hints Dave Ensminger’s life would unfold in a positive fashion.
Such as when he attentively fed his mother and saw to her needs when she was bedridden.
“She said the other kids were too busy to bother with her,” he recalled. “Maybe I was more careful with her.”
His mother died at age 43 from cancer in 1947. Dave was 16 years old, the second of four children.
Dave ponders the idea that the years have laid bare his core.
“I hope I’m humble,” he said.
He doesn’t mention he and his brother, Alden, were instrumental in the founding of Citizens State Bank in Moran in early 1970s. He doesn’t bring up the family’s successful Ensminger Grain and Seed business founded by their grandfather in 1888.
And it’s only in thinking about his late wife that he mentions he and three other family members established the Moran Manor Nursing Home.
Forty years ago such things may have seemed important to Dave.
But today, “My highest calling is to witness to God,” he said. “Of course, I have more time on my hands to do such things. 
“But at 92 years and four months — and you count the months at my age — I feel closer to heaven.”.
Not that he’s in a hurry to get there, but for Dave it’s a comforting thought because he believes it will mean a reunion with his “little wife,” the late Velma Ann Siders Ensminger who died 8½ years ago.
“And when I get there, I won’t want to come back. I’ll want to stay there forever and ever.”
Velma suffered from dementia for the last two years of her life. As with his mother, Dave tended to his wife’s needs as long as possible.
