From 2013 — Lucille Pierce and Sharon Van Heuitt (Nine years later, Lucille looks just the same!)

The four of us met for lunch — Lucille Pierce, Cherry Harding, Barbara Bennet, and I — for the first time since the Pandemic.  It might have been the first time, too, that Lucille had not driven herself from Portland for our “almost annual” get-togethers.  But then, she is 101!  She does still drive around her Portland neighborhood (near Reed College) and tries to do the “all right-hand-turns thing,” she told us.  Otherwise… no concessions to age.  She goes to church every Sunday, enjoys the symphony regularly, takes a yoga class, and… she wore the rest of us out, just hearing about it.

Barbara Bennett Parsons – photo from graysharbortalk.co,m

Barbara Bennett Parsons is the youngest of us four but says she has “practically” retired now.  Although she and her husband now live in Montesano, she maintains an office  in Hoquiam where she grew up.  There, on the second floor 0f the historic building that houses the post office, Barbara  lovingly takes care of the extensive legacy of her father, the late Hoquiam artist Elton Bennett (1910-1974). Most of Elton Bennett’s work consists of serigraphs (also called silk-screens).   And she gardens and rides her trail bike and is active in so many community events, it’s hard to believe that she has time to organize these luncheons.

The Quintessential Cherry Harding!

Besides me, the only Peninsula-ite was Cherry Harding.  I wish we had each stopped to tell how we all came to know one another.  Since we didn’t, I’m afraid I can only share from my perspecitive! Long ago, Cherry worked for us at the Bookvendor and, since then, she is everyplace all the time — the schools, CPHM, the library book sales.  Cherry is the Queen of the Volunteers! When Lucille lived here she, also, was active in everything but I always think of her as the Grand Dame of Water Music — one of the first movers-and-shakers of the Festival.  And Barbara lived here for a few years and ran an art gallery in Long Beach (or maybe Seaview?) on the east side Pacific Avenue.  Plus, of course… it’s the Peninsula!  If you live here long enough, eventually you meet other “like-minded” folks and, if you are lucky, continue having an annual lunch-get-together with them for about a gazillion years.

We laughed and talked and checked on each others’ health issues. We remembered old friends, lamented those who had left too soon, and talked about old times.  And, of course, we all said, “Same time next year!”