They\u2019ve seen everything from the invention of margarine to the advent of the super mall.<\/p>\n
Through it all – the wars and the Depression, the good times and the bad, Kent\u2019s longtime residents have remained firm in their desire to live in the town where so much of their lives unfurled.<\/p>\n
\u201cKent\u2019s a great city,\u201d said Len McCaughan, 83, who moved to the former Lettuce Capital of the World (Kent\u2019s old claim to fame) when he was just 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like small town, even though it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a convenient, relatively clean town,\u201d said McCaughan\u2019s buddy Alan Sells, also 83, who was born and raised in Kent. \u201cBut it\u2019s getting too big; it\u2019s losing its meaning. There were 3,000 people here when I was a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
That number has since catapulted to more than 88,000, making Kent the fourth-largest city in King County. And as both men can attest, the years and that population increase have changed Kent in many ways.<\/p>\n
But come Sunday, the memories of those past years will come alive, when the Kent Old Timers Reunion gets under way Sunday at the Kent Senior Activity Center. Now in its 20th year, the event runs 1-4 p.m.<\/p>\n
The highlight will be a presentation ceremony at 2 p.m., where a select group of \u201cold timers\u201d will be honored.<\/p>\n
In this year\u2019s group are McCaughan and Sells, with their wives Dorothy and Audrey, along with five others (see list on page 5.)<\/p>\n
John Mergens, one of the original organizers of the event, said he\u2019s hoping to see young and old at the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople of all ages should come and see who we\u2019re honoring, and why we\u2019re honoring them,\u201d he said, noting attendance has gradually been dropping at the annual event. \u201cWe need the younger people.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCaughan, in spite of his eight decades, seems to embody that sense of youth. A long-time devotee of airplanes and flying (he was in the Army Air Corps in 1943, but the fighter-plane program he was in was scrapped before he got to fly), he was seriously considering skydiving this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut my doctors, after several operations, said I shouldn\u2019t do that,\u201d McCoughin said with a grin, noting the 180 mph he\u2019d be falling caused his docs to worry.<\/p>\n
But in spite of his happy memories as an enthusiastic pilot – he got his flying lessons after the war, thanks to the G.I. Bill – McCaughan remembers the hard times, too, growing up in Kent during the Great Depression.<\/p>\n
His dad quit his overseas job, in order to be home with the family, and they struggled to make ends meet. Even today, McCaughan says, he\u2019ll buy multiple items when he shops, to always have something as a backup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a Depression kid, I remember,\u201d he said. \u201cYou just want a lot of backup – you remember the tough times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sells, who was born and raised in Kent, remembered those lean years as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy,\u201d he said, noting his dad worked as a Ford mechanic, and there were times when he didn\u2019t get paid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cut back on what we were doing, and what we were eating.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a child of the Depression, Sells also was a young man during World War II, and he spent his time in the Philippines and China as a member of the Seabees (the Navy Construction Battalion) fixing military vehicles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to take a vacation with Uncle Sam for two years,\u201d he quipped wryly of being drafted fresh out of Kent High School.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t hard for Sells to make inroads back to Kent, as soon as his military hitch was up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a high-school sweetheart, and she waited for me,\u201d Sells said, of wife Audrey, with whom he has been married for 63 years.<\/p>\n
Sells went on to become a firefighter in Kent, first as a volunteer, and then as one of the first paid firefighters the city had. He retired in 1978 as a battalion chief.<\/p>\n
After a short stint at the local Smith Brothers Dairy (where Sells also had worked at one point) McCaughan became an agent for New York Life, retiring in 1992.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been married to his sweetheart Dorothy for the past 60 years, in addition to having served two terms on the Kent City Council.<\/p>\n
In all, it\u2019s been a busy life for the two Kent long-timers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to slow down – I\u2019m right at middle age now,\u201d McCaughan said with a grin.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kent Old Timers\u2019 Reunion<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s honorees: Len and Dorothy McCaughan, Alan and Audrey Sells, Ed and Florence Amundsen, Jim Bonnason, Virginia Purdy and Charles and Fran Wilson.<\/p>\n
Event runs 1-4 p.m. Sunday at the Kent Senior Activity Center, 600 E. Smith St. Presentation begins 2 p.m.<\/p>\n
Information: Kent Historical Museum at 253-854-4330<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They\u2019ve seen everything from the invention of margarine to the advent of the super mall. Through it all – the wars and the Depression, the good times and the bad, Kent\u2019s longtime residents have remained firm in their desire to live in the town where so much of their lives unfurled. \u201cKent\u2019s a great city,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":5595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5594"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}