DIAMOND POINT — Family, friends and chocolate were on Joan Butler’s planner as she marked a century on earth.
Butler’s garage was decked out with balloons, photographs and smiling people on Dec. 19.
“I’m feeling good,” she said as she sat below balloons shaped in the number 100. “I don’t feel like 100. Ninety-nine wasn’t so bad.
“Life is good. All of it.”
Butler moved to the Sequim area 50 years ago from Somerset in Bellevue with her husband Ladd, a builder who died in 2010. He semi-retired to Sequim in 1975 and continued to build casually until the early 1980s.
Butler has lived in the house he built 35 years ago and said it’s her favorite place in the Sequim area. Through their years together, she helped Ladd paint trim, interiors and exterior boards, family members said.
Butler was a homemaker who also tagged along with her husband on fishing and hunting trips, not to fish or hunt but more as support to help look for elk.
“Not a lot of wives do that,” youngest son Gary Butler said.
The couple had three sons — Randy, Brad and Gary — and six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren.
Butler said she is known as “Nana” among them all.
She was born in Scotland, and during the Great Depression, her family lived in Santa Monica, Calif., while her father would travel back and forth to Washington seeking work as an electrician with Boeing.
“Times were hard,” Butler said.
Her father eventually found work with United Airlines, and her family moved to Washington.
With her birthday so close to Christmas, Butler said her mom always made sure she felt special on her big day.
As for her keys to longevity, Butler said she stayed away from smoking and stayed active.
“I didn’t smoke like so many of my friends did, and now they’re all gone,” she said.
The Butlers liked to ski, and Ladd was part of the ski patrol at Snoqualmie, which helped them all ski for free.
She encouraged others to stay active and keep moving too.
Until a few years ago, she used to mow the lawn and drive.
Butler and her husband traveled the globe, but she couldn’t narrow her favorite spot to one place.
“I loved them all,” she said.
Family members said Butler was an avid gardener and helped with the Sequim Valley Garden Club. They said she loves music and is a fan of Tom Jones, Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass Band, Engelbert Humperdinck, and many more singers and musicians.
Her one vice? Chocolate — “any chocolate,” she said.
For her 100th birthday, she shared a large chocolate cake with family and friends.
________
Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. He can be reached by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
