Celebrating 100 Years

The seventh of 10 children, Esther Wood grew up on her family's farm on the banks of the Columbia River outside Rainier, Oregon.

"I lived way out of town," Wood recalled in an interview with the Journal on Tuesday. "I couldn't do anything on my own without a ride."

But once she got off the secluded farm, Wood kept moving. She became a city girl during World War II living in Portland, conducting payroll in the office of the naval shipyard in Vancouver, Washington. She posed with Elvis Presley's uncle at the gates of Graceland in 1957, when the King was away, while on a trek through Tennessee. She helped deliver a trailer on a journey from Longview through Mexico to Belize on the Caribbean Sea.

On Oct. 7, Wood was in Shelton celebrating her century on the globe. "It's just amazing I grew this old," she said. "I don't know how I did it. I didn't want to, I didn't expect to."

Wood was born on the family farm on Oct. 7, 1924, two days after Calvin Coolidge was elected U.S. president and the same day the comic strip Little Orphan Annie debuted in the New York Daily News. Also born in 1924 were U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, actors Marlon Brando and Lauren Bacall, and writer Truman Capote.

Wood's father, Gene, worked the night shift at the Long Bell Plant in Longview. He and a neighboring co-worker rowed across the Columbia River to their jobs. No phones, bridges or roads connected him to his farm and worried family when the weather was bad.

During her junior year at Kelso High School, Wood became the master dessert baker in the family following lessons in her home economics class. Also, "I loved the water, I loved swimming," she said. "I was a junior lifeguard when I was growing up."

After the war, she married Ronald Anderson and had three children, including Connie Simpson, a Shelton resident since 1990. She and her second husband, Joe Wood, moved across the Columbia River to Clatskanie, Oregon. Like her father, she crossed the river to work, as a bookkeeper and office manager. When Joe was injured on the job, the couple embraced the snowbird life and began spending winters in Quartzsite, Arizona. That's where the couple began managing a new RV park.

"I like to talk to people," she said of the job. "I was always asking, 'Where are you from?' I enjoyed being manager." After Joe died, she moved to Olympia to be closer to family, but continued to drive to Quartzside every fall to manage the park.

She met her third husband, Bill, when he rented a space at her park. They traveled the country in Bill's motorhome and built a two-story A-frame house in the woods outside Fairplay, Colorado, where they once encountered a bear on their porch. But Bill's health deteriorated and they moved to a Denver suburb to get health care help from his family. He died at age 102.

Two years ago, Wood moved to Shelton to live with her daughter. She's a regular at the Thursday bingo games at the Mason County Senior Activities Association center. "I like bingo but now it's getting harder to see and hear," she said.

On her 100th birthday, the senior center hosted a Bingo Birthday Bash for her.

"It was great. I had all kinds of gifts. A lot of my family came." Guests included her 91-year-old sister.

These days, Wood plays card games on her iPad, browses Facebook and watches the TV game shows "Wheel of Fortune" and "The Price is Right." She enjoys the 1954 movie "White Christmas" with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney all seasons. "I know it by heart."

And what advice has she gleaned from her century on the planet?

"Stay healthy. Don't drink too much. Don't smoke. I guess that's the main stuff."