Mary Jane Henke was enjoying a game of bingo with her husband, Fred, along with their friends and family at Sunday's St. Francis Xavier Harvest Festival.
She deserved to relax.
Like everyone else in the parish, she started volunteer work at church events as a youth - the parish starts recruiting workers when they turn 13 - and she's continued to help out until a couple years ago.
"I'm 87, and I've been here almost all of my life," she said. She continues to come to the events for one main reason: "The people," she said. "It's a fun time to get together with all of your relatives."
That includes former parishioners who now live in St. Louis who traveled to the annual event.
The festival is one of the biggest fundraisers of the year for the church and school, typically bringing in between $25,000 and $28,000, said event co-chair Glenda Vanderfeltz.
It featured a family-style dinner with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, turnips, cranberry sauce and more desserts than you could begin to count.
"Anything you would want to see on a Thanksgiving table, you'll see it," Vanderfeltz said.
Henke learned how to play the piano at the age of 10, and parlayed that talent into a lifetime of volunteer organ playing for the church. "I feel like I'm playing for the Lord," the Taos native said.
One of her favorite songs to play is "Holy God."
In her lifetime, she's been through a lot. She and her husband have had a dozen children, eight of whom survive. They've faced the loss of one child to a car wreck.
They've also watched a son, Tom Henke, have a successful major league pitching career, helping the Toronto Blue Jays win the 1992 World Series. Known as the "Taos Terminator," he was one of the most feared closing pitchers in the late 1980s and early '90s.
She said the parish has been by her side through the good times and the bad. "When something happens, they pull together," she said. "You're not going through it alone."