PORT TOWNSEND — Louise King was born in Tuscumbia, Ala., 107 years ago today — a year most can relate to only through history books.
On the day King was born in 1908, her mother had just missed the very first Mother’s Day by two days, President Theodore Roosevelt was in his second term, Harvard Business School had just been approved and the Chicago Cubs were in the midst of their most recent World Series title season.
She was four months old before the very first Model T automobile rolled off Henry Ford’s new factory floor.
King, who recovered from a broken hip in 2012 and still gets around her residence at Seaport Landing with a walker, may have difficulty hearing, but her mind is sharp.
Her secret to longevity?
“Be positive. Be determined. Never be idle. Always be in a state of learning,” she said Monday, her last day as a 106-year-old.
She may have slowed down, but still reads with a magnifying glass and walks to her meals.
“Her mind is like a steel trap,” Christie Hensley, said Seaport Landing activities director, who noted the centenarian can remember specific dates of things that happened to her going back most of her life.
On May 12, 1908, she was born to Harvey Wade and Hattie Atoil, just a block from Helen Keller’s family home.
She was a member of a large family, said her son, Charles King of Sequim.
“She remembers her older brothers coming home from World War I,” Charles King said.
Feb. 17, 1947 was the day she applied for her first job with the U.S. Navy in Peninsula, Fla.
She worked in the business office, supporting the military base operations for more than 20 years.
Six years after getting that first job, her husband and father of their three children, Oscar Elmer King, died, leaving her a widow supporting three children.
King said the hardest thing she ever did was to find the will to go on after her husband died.
Her mantra was, “Don’t give up. Keep going. Keep going.”
She quit her job just short of 30 years, missing out on retirement, in order to attend a wedding.
At the time, employees only got one day a year off and had to apply for it well ahead of time.
She was denied the application for the date of a family member’s wedding.
“I needed that day off. I wanted to give a full 30 years, but I had to have that day off,” she said.
So she retired early, went to the wedding and started a new career.
She took classes in interior decorating and clothing design, then worked for a formalwear company creating evening attire for men and women.
King said she only regrets one thing.
“I always wanted to be a fashion designer,” she said.
However, with three children to raise, there was never enough money for her to take the time to break into the industry.
Later, her children did their best to make those years up to their mother.
Her sons, Charles and Kenneth King, a Nevada resident, each became an airplane pilot, purchased planes and flew her to see sights around the country.
Her daughter, Margaret, died in 2006.
She also moved to Sequim in 2006, to be near Charles.
Then there was June 12, 2012 — the day she broke her hip.
She refused to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair and fought to walk again. And she did.
Even at 107, King is not the oldest person in Washington state.
That title is held by Emma Otis, 113, of Poulsbo who on Monday was listed as the seventh oldest American and the 15th oldest person in the world.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
