Chuck and Nancy Simpson are proud to be the Old Timers King and Queen for the 2011 Kent Cornucopia Days except for one thing.
“I’m too young,” said Nancy, 67.
“They need to change the name,” said Chuck, 73.
Chuck and Nancy are younger than the last several King and Queen couples. But they also know what the Greater Kent Historical Society looks for when it selects the Old Timers.
“We understand it means you have lived in the city a long time,” said Nancy, a fourth generation Kent resident.
Chuck arrived in town at age 4 when his family moved here from Wisconsin.
As the King and Queen, the two will ride in the King Cornucopia Days Grand Parade at 2 p.m. Sunday in downtown Kent. The parade’s theme is “Kent Cornucopia Days – 40 and Fabulous,” to celebrate the 40 years of the modern format of the festival, which originated in 1934.
They will ride in a maroon 1946 Ford driven by Jerry Ruth, the former dragster and Funny Car racer from Kent who dominated the Pacific Northwest circuit in the 1960s and 1970s.
Although Chuck and Nancy might not be old timers, they have been around Kent long enough to tell stories about working the farmland in the Kent Valley where warehouse after warehouse now stands.
“I crawled up and down the Valley floor picking strawberries,” Nancy said.
“I was 12 and made $120 one summer,” recalled Chuck, who earned the money from hoeing, weeding and planting fields and later worked at the old Libby’s cannery in Kent.
The couple met on a blind date set up by friends in February 1965. They married each other less than five months later. They celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary July 3. They have lived 45 years at the same house they bought new on Kent’s East Hill, just off of Southeast 208th Street.
“That’s when 208th Street was a two-lane country road with ditches on the side,” Nancy said.
Nancy grew up on Scenic Hill and attended Kent Elementary School, Kent Junior High and Kent-Meridian High School (Class of 1962). Chuck attended O’Brien Elementary, Kent Junior High and Kent-Meridian (Class of 1956).
Chuck worked 39 years at Boeing. He started out as a painter and later worked as an experimental plastic fabricator. He worked on the Airborne Warning and Control System, also known as AWACS, and other programs.
Although Chuck retired from Boeing in 1995, he still works part-time at the Kent warehouse for Auburn-based J.P. Work and Associates, a food broker that supplies smaller stores as well as food banks.
Nancy worked for Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Co., in the 1960s and then quit to be at home with their two children. She later returned to work as the resident director at Judson Park retirement center in Des Moines. She also spent several years at a plant nursery in Fife.
With a backyard that includes a greenhouse, garden and many plants and flowers, Nancy not only keeps up her yard but for the last year has added the Kent Historical Museum grounds to her duties.
“We’re putting in new flower beds and adding to them,” Nancy said about the museum at 866 E. Smith St.
“I’m the free labor,” said her husband about his help at the museum grounds.
In addition to their children Stacy Affeldt, of Kent, and Mark Simpson, of Sumner, they have four grandchildren.
The Simpsons, for the most part, still enjoy living in Kent. But they are disappointed with how the Valley has changed so much over the years.
“They’ve covered good farmland with warehouses,” Chuck said.
On Sunday, however, they will simply focus on being the King and Queen of Kent Cornucopia Days. It will be the first Kent parade for Chuck, but Nancy’s making a return.
“I’ve had Scout groups in there before,” she said. “I walked with the Bluebirds.”
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