They’ve 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’s longtime residents have remained firm in their desire to live in the town where so much of their lives unfurled.
“Kent’s a great city,” said Len McCaughan, 83, who moved to the former Lettuce Capital of the World (Kent’s old claim to fame) when he was just 7.
“It feels like small town, even though it isn’t.”
“It’s a convenient, relatively clean town,” said McCaughan’s buddy Alan Sells, also 83, who was born and raised in Kent. “But it’s getting too big; it’s losing its meaning. There were 3,000 people here when I was a kid.”
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.
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.
The highlight will be a presentation ceremony at 2 p.m., where a select group of “old timers” will be honored.
In this year’s group are McCaughan and Sells, with their wives Dorothy and Audrey, along with five others (see list on page 5.)
John Mergens, one of the original organizers of the event, said he’s hoping to see young and old at the event.
“People of all ages should come and see who we’re honoring, and why we’re honoring them,” he said, noting attendance has gradually been dropping at the annual event. “We need the younger people.”
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.
“But my doctors, after several operations, said I shouldn’t do that,” McCoughin said with a grin, noting the 180 mph he’d be falling caused his docs to worry.
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.
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’ll buy multiple items when he shops, to always have something as a backup.
“I’m a Depression kid, I remember,” he said. “You just want a lot of backup – you remember the tough times.”
Sells, who was born and raised in Kent, remembered those lean years as well.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said, noting his dad worked as a Ford mechanic, and there were times when he didn’t get paid.
“We cut back on what we were doing, and what we were eating.”
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.
“I had to take a vacation with Uncle Sam for two years,” he quipped wryly of being drafted fresh out of Kent High School.
But it wasn’t hard for Sells to make inroads back to Kent, as soon as his military hitch was up.
“I had a high-school sweetheart, and she waited for me,” Sells said, of wife Audrey, with whom he has been married for 63 years.
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.
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.
He’s been married to his sweetheart Dorothy for the past 60 years, in addition to having served two terms on the Kent City Council.
In all, it’s been a busy life for the two Kent long-timers.
“I’m trying to slow down – I’m right at middle age now,” McCaughan said with a grin.
Kent Old Timers’ Reunion
This year’s honorees: Len and Dorothy McCaughan, Alan and Audrey Sells, Ed and Florence Amundsen, Jim Bonnason, Virginia Purdy and Charles and Fran Wilson.
Event runs 1-4 p.m. Sunday at the Kent Senior Activity Center, 600 E. Smith St. Presentation begins 2 p.m.
Information: Kent Historical Museum at 253-854-4330
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