If the name Limping Lena means anything to you, chances are you grew up in Stillwater.
Lena Rumpf, known as “Limping Lena” or “Leapin’ Lena,” was famous for walking around downtown with a stick, cursing all the way.
Rumpf, who died in 1992 at age 88, was “4-foot-nothing and weighed less than 70 pounds,” said Brent Peterson, executive director of the Washington County Historical Society. “She skipped everywhere. I remember walking downtown with my mother one day, and a truck crossed the Lift Bridge and came too close to the road. Lena started cussing and beating the grille of the truck with her stick.”
Now, Rumpf’s stick is part of the Washington County Historical Society’s collection. Dave Palmer, the son of Mary Palmer, Rumpf’s caregiver, recently donated Rumpf’s stick, watch, eyeglasses and other items belonging to Rumpf to the society.
“My mom passed away in March, and I’ve been going through all her stuff,” said Palmer, who lives in Lake Elmo. “These were filed in her important papers.”
Mary Palmer, of Stillwater, knew Rumpf through her work for the Hooley family and Cub Foods, he said. Rumpf cleaned the company’s corporate offices in downtown Stillwater; Mary Palmer worked and arranged the handing out of samples for Cub Foods stores, he said.
Dave Palmer, who used to deliver the Stillwater Gazette, said he remembers being terrified of Rumpf when he was little. “The first day that I saw her in our house, I about had a heart attack,” he said.
Palmer said he would run into Rumpf while delivering newspapers at the buildings she cleaned.
“I’d come flying around corners, delivering papers as fast as I could, and sometimes she’d be there,” he said. “Oh, boy. It was ‘G.D. this’ and ‘G.D. that.’ She wasn’t a real big fan of men in general, and so I was terrified. But you know what? She was just such a little character. And the things she’d say. Every once in a while, I think in maybe 20 or 30 exchanges or in her presence, I heard her laugh, and it was wonderful.”
Palmer said he always remembers Rumpf’s stick being “pretty big,” and was surprised to find it was only a couple of feet long. “She was just such a tiny little thing that it was just this little, little stick,” he said.
“We always called her Leapin’ Lena, because she did a little leap as she walked down the road cussing at people,” Meg Anderson Brownson, who owned Meg’s Cafe in downtown Stillwater, told the Pioneer Press in 2011. “She was very teeny and ate quite often at my cafe on Main Street. ‘I wanna gadamn egg and a gadamn piece of toast, and I’m only gonna pay a gadamn dollar.’ ”
Grew up in Dutchtown
According to a story that ran in the Stillwater Courier when Rumpf died in 1992, Mary Palmer said Rumpf weighed 67 pounds and once told her that she walked around town with a stick because “if she held a stick up and hollered and yelled, they would think she was crazy and leave her alone.”
An undated courtesy photo of Lena Rumpf from the collection of the Washington County Heritage Center. (Claudia Staut / Pioneer Press)
Rumpf is believed to have had Tourette Syndrome, according to the Courier article, characterized by recurring tics and at least one vocal tic.
Rumpf lived in the house where she grew up in Dutchtown, just north of downtown Stillwater, before moving to Maple Manor care center in 1983. She dropped out of school at age 14 when she developed a neurological disorder, the Courier article states.
Several downtown businesses employed Lena for her cleaning skills. In addition to cleaning the corporate office for Hooley’s Grocery Store in downtown Stillwater, Rumpf also cleaned for Dr. Raymond “Dr. Jo” Josewski, whose office was on Main Street in downtown Stillwater, according to the Stillwater Courier article.
Rumpf would “march down the stairs from Dr. Jo’s office carrying a bucket of slop water,” the article states. “From the bottom of the stairs, Lena would continue out to the curb, from where she’d fling the slop water –– right on Main Street. If you were in the way, (Lorrayne) Dixon said, ‘Forget it, Charlie!’”
Rumpf, who never married or had children, kept her money rolled up in a rubber band in her bra, the article states.
Bob Thompson, the owner of Thompson Hardware in downtown Stillwater, “was one of the few people who could give (Rumpf) a ride home,” the article states. “Thompson Hardware was also the place for Lena – with her purse tied to her blouse – would go to get her checks cashed although only Bob, his father or bookkeeper Marguerite Kunde could cash them.”
Rumpf is buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery in Bayport.
Town characters
Michael DeMiglio, a Stillwater artist, included Lena Rumpf in a mural he was commissioned to do for the Miller Building on Second Street in downtown Stillwater. “My paintings show historical Stillwater and were an homage to people in Stillwater who were beloved and memorable,” DeMiglio said. (Courtesy of Michael DeMiglio)
Rumpf is one of many town characters remembered fondly by people who grew up in Stillwater, Peterson said. Also on the list: Stanford “Buster” Lassen and Jerry the Milkman, he said.
“When you say ‘town character,’ it’s not anything against them,” Peterson said. “If you’re from Stillwater, you know these people. She was a character, and that’s what makes Stillwater, even today, one of the most unique places you’ll ever live. It’s because of the uniqueness of the community. Lena, Buster, Jerry the Milkman, they all were a part of that.”
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Michael DeMiglio, a Stillwater artist, included Rumpf in a mural he was commissioned to do for the Miller Building on Second Street in downtown Stillwater. The painting is an “homage to people in Stillwater who were beloved and memorable,” and also features Lassen and the late mayor Choc Junker, DeMiglio said.
“Lena contributed greatly in her cleaning work, but even more so in teaching an entire generation about showing respect to those who are different,” he wrote in a statement posted on his website. “So many people here have memories of the lessons they learned from their parents and grandparents about being kind and loving. Lena descends from a founding family of Stillwater, and I would say that her personality left behind a legacy that shaped the character of those who grew up here — a lesson we could continue to teach.”
Rumpf’s items will be catalogued and will be displayed at the Washington County Heritage Center at a future date in a case devoted to new acquisitions and new donations, Peterson said.
