By By MARCIA STEFFENS / Niles Daily Star
EDWARDSBURG - For 100 years old - she still looks like a little girl.
The 100th birthday of Raggedy Anne was celebated with balloons, cake and punch Sunday afternoon behind the Edwardsburg Area Historical Collection Museum.
Girls of all ages came clutching their favorite Raggedy Anne in their arms.
Two women, both from Niles, found friendship blossoming as they discovered they both are avid collectors. Photo albums were pulled from their purses and immediately they began sharing pictures of their massive collections of items that keep growing.
Cindy Cloutier bought her first item at the Niles Apple Fest, a cute plaque, in 1974. Wearing a Raggedy Anne t-shirt at Sunday's party, she explained she has been collecting ever since. Her basement is overflowing.
Some of her items also carry memories of stores which didn't last as long as this beloved doll. She showed a photo of a poster welcoming Raggedy Anne and her brother Andy. She got it from Montgomery Wards, when they closed out a section dedicated to Raggedy Anne items.
She also has a window shade from the old Wonderland in Niles.
She couldn't find her earrings for Sunday's party, but another woman from Niles came up wearing some.
Amy Nelson, 39, was please to meet Cloutier. She has been a collector "my whole life," she said.
Her mother, Susan Williams of Niles encouraged the collecting. "It's taken off since she was an adult," said Williams. Mainly she looks for antiques, like the Anne on display at the party with actual shoebutton eyes.
Marilyn Horvath of Elkhart, Ind. brought that old doll, along with many new ones. In her stripped socks, red dress and hair, she delighted the audience with the somewhat sad tale of Raggedy Anne's humble beginnings.
The dirty, raggedy doll she pulled out by its foot, was cleaned up and restuffed.
It was Marcella's father, Johnny Rule, Horvath said, a cartoonist, who gave the doll its famous face and red heart on its chest.
When the girl died at age 14, after taking sick from a contaminated needle, her father wrote done the stories he had told her when she was sick, to ease his grief.
This "classic American doll" rises in popularity about every 20 years, Horvath said.
Raggedy Anne has been to Monaco with Princess Grace, toured the world with Bob Hope and has been exhibited at a world's fair, and continues to be loved today.