By Jeff Chew
Peninsula Daily News
SEQUIM — Louise King turns 103 today, and the Tuscumbia, Ala., “tomboy” says staying active and loving family have been the key to her longevity.
“The highlight of my life has been with my family, traveling to different places and seeing different parts of the world,” said King, oldest living resident ever at The Fifth Avenue retirement center, on Wednesday.
“I think that people who don’t have a family miss out on a lot.”
With the aid of a walker, King — who also deals with hearing loss and macular degeneration, an age-related medical condition that results in a loss of vision in the center of the visual field — said she tries to remain as active as she can.
“I like to take one day at a time and just do the best I can at my age,” she said.
Family and friends are expected to celebrate King’s 103rd birthday today at The Fifth Avenue, 500 W. Hendrickson Road.
Born May 12, 1908, in Tuscumbia, just around the corner from where Helen Keller was born, King has been at The Fifth Avenue since before she hit the century mark.
She recalls as a young girl her parents’ best advice: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Admitting to making a few mistakes in life like most humans, she said she tries to think things through before she jumps in.
A widow since 1953, she raised her son Charles King, who lives in Sequim with his wife, Althea, and other son Kenneth of Pahrump, Nev.
They are 78 and 81, respectively, she said, and Charles frequently visits his mother.
Her daughter, Margaret, died from an antibiotic, she said.
She moved from Jacksonville, Fla., to Sequim in 2007 to be near her son.
She met her husband, Oscar, during a party with her high school classmates. He served in the military and worked for the Gadsden Express railway.
Her father was a foreman for the planing mill at Southern Railway shops for 40 years
“I wasn’t planning on getting married, didn’t even think about it,” she said.
“I went to nurses’ training for over a year and never finished because he had different plans.
“He wouldn’t give up,” she said. “He chased me.”
They married in 1929 at the onset of the Great Depression and not long before the Wall Street crash.
“We lived on $1 a day for two years,” she recalled.
Loving to learn, she said she later took a number of junior college classes, even until just before macular degeneration took over her vision, forcing her to stop driving in 1999.
She remembers growing up as a tomboy.
“Me and my brother did things together,” she said, adding she climbed a tree to the very top, towering over their home.
She loved to fish, play baseball and swim with the boys.
“My mama never knew about these things because some of them were dangerous,” she said.
At home, she said, she planned the meals and learned how to cook at her mother’s insistence.
“I’m rather independent,” she said. “I just like to help people.”
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.