SEQUIM –– A medical professor, a school cook, a teacher and acclaimed football coach, and a festival regular have been tabbed as pioneers for the 2014 Irrigation Festival.
Jack Stevens and Dorothy Daniels Ludke will be Grand Pioneers, and will be Glenn Greathouse and Mabel Heine Sorensen Honorary Pioneers after being selected recently by the Sequim Pioneer Association.
Sequim’s 119th Irrigation Festival, the oldest festival in Washington state, will be May 2-11.
A busy spring
The four honorees will make their first appearance at the Sequim High School Royalty Pageant on March 1.
They also will attend the Irrigation Festival kickoff dinner later in March.
They will be honored at the annual Pioneer Dinner, held at the Sequim Prairie Grange on Friday, May 9, and ride in the Irrigation Festival Grand Parade on Saturday, May 10.
The four also will attend other functions leading up to the Irrigation Festival.
Grand pioneers are those who were born and raised in the Dungeness Valley. Honorary pioneers must have lived in Sequim at least 40 years.
The festival has honored its pioneers since 1949, Pioneer Association President Bud Knapp said, though at that time, it was called the Old Timer’s Club.
Jack Stevens, 80, returned to Sequim 17 years ago after retiring as a scientist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine.
He grew up in Sequim the son of Dr. John Stevens, one of the valley’s first veterinarians.
He and wife Nancy have two children and five grandchildren.
Dorothy Daniels Ludke, 83, cooked in the Helen Haller Elementary School cafeteria for many years before retiring.
Ludke is the great-granddaughter of John Bell, who donated the city’s initial tracts of land.
She and her late husband, Gayhard Ludke, have three children, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Mabel Sorensen, 84, has lived in the Sequim area since moving with her logger father, Charles Heine, at the age of 5.
Her family has staked out spots to watch in Creamery Square to watch the Irrigation Festival parade for many, many years.
She is married to Donald Sorensen, with whom Mabel has four children, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Glenn Greathouse, 82, taught wood shop and coached football in Sequim schools before retiring to run the Greathouse Motel on East Washington Street.
A Sequim resident since 1955, Greathouse served on the City Council from 1992 to 1997.
His wife, Jacquelyn, is deceased. He has three children, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.