08/28/2026
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The sun shines upon the fields of another day of another year where Pat and Peggy Napper have remained a constant in the Billings area. More than 64 years have passed since they wed, time ticking by like an old-fashioned flip book: One that moves both a little at a time, but fast enough to bring great change.
But the story that led me to their living room in rural Christian County, Missouri, goes back even further, as Pat was born 90 years ago on the property his family secured in 1879. Peggy was from near Buffalo, Missouri, trained as a nurse in Springfield, and moved to the farm when they wed.
“After I graduated from nurses' training, Martha (a girl from Billings) and I worked in the operating room at Mercy,” Peggy shares. “She said, ‘One of my friends would like to have a date. Would you want to go out?’ I said, ‘Sure.’
“Well, he didn't call for a couple of weeks, so she asked me, ‘Did he call?’ I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Well, If he doesn't call, I won't do this again.’
“So he called me. I think we went out on a Wednesday, and then we went again on Thursday. He was a farmer, and he played ball. So on Sunday, I think he had a ball game. You know, with some of his friends.”
“Every little town had a town team,” Pat says from the next-to-her recliner.
“So he took me to the ball game, and that’s how we met,” she continues.
That was it. They married a few years later, and have been involved in Billings life – and on that family land – ever since. And this year, they've been chosen as the grand marshals of the Billings Community Fair. It’s a second-generation recognition: Pat’s mother was also the grand marshal when she was 97 years old.
“It is quite an honor,” Peggy says. “You feel something kind of special. First of all, why? What have I done to get this? You try to think, ‘What did I do that was good enough?’ The only thing I can think: We've just been here a long time. But we've been in the community a long time, joined in a lot of things, not done any more than anybody else. We're all just kind of in it together. But it is kind of a fun thing.”
The fair – celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2026 – is long a community staple. There are exhibits, that parade and a queen contest. Community groups, too, have fundraisers – like the Nappers’ parish, where the men’s club has long made ice cream for the festival and the ladies bake cakes.
It's one moment in the larger story of everyday connections.
In addition to farming, Pat served in the National Guard, was involved in refereeing football and basketball, worked at a walnut bowl factory, and drove a school bus for 25 years.
“I had the kindergarten in the front seat all the way back to the seniors in the high school,” Pat says, noting that for years he had girls sit on one side and boys on the other. “And if they misbehave, they're sitting up there beside me. And you know – some of the worst kids … that I had to discipline, are the most friendly today.”
Back when Ozarks school districts began hiring nurses, Peggy was asked to be the first at nearby Republic, where she worked with students for three decades.
“Everybody loves the nurse, you know,” she says of work that she shadowed one day in another district to learn. “The nurse takes care of everything. If a child needs a new pair of shoes, you go to the nurse. If they need to go see the dentist, you send them to the nurse. If they have a stomachache; if they need a button sewed on, you send them to the nurse.
“You're just a good mother.”
Along the way, three Napper children came along and grew up. The family milked cows and later had beef cattle; worked as a team; and survived a tornado. And Pat and Peggy are still there, photos on their living room wall — and salvaged wooden beams in their ceiling — as a reminder of what they've come through.
Those moments — and others in community life — don't just happen. Like rebuilding after a storm, building a community is a choice. That's alongside knowledge that things never stay the same, even in Billings.
“We used to go visit, and we don't anymore,” Pat says of a shift in local culture. “(Folks) visit very seldom unless they want something. But we used to play cards and everything else at night.”
Still, while there are people, there is hope. The Nappers talk of the volunteer-led library, and of plans for the new Billings senior center for which locals are currently raising money. They were bringing items up to the fundraising garage sale as I readied to leave today.
“It's home. We're all in it together,” Peggy says, sharing of a time years ago when Pat was in the hospital and neighbors pitched in to help the family with its farming needs.
"Everybody that saw me, they said, 'Now, Peggy, if you need anything, you let me know,'" she recalls. "Well, I made a list — everybody that said that, I just put their name on a list. (Over) the next 18 days that he was in the hospital, I needed a lot of things, and I just called the next one on the list, and they came. They came and did it."
Those efforts — from building fence to bailing hay — happened years ago, but connections remain.
“Why we need to go so far away to be entertained, I don't know,” she adds. “I like to think that when I go uptown, that all those people I see are my friends.”
