EVERETT — Clarence and Violet Lentz consider themselves quiet people.
They don’t talk much, and they don’t talk loudly. Their three kids are the same way. The Lentzes have been married for 60 years now, in the same single-story house in Everett.
The way it used to be, before the neighbor’s trees towered over the fence, people always could spot the Lentz house from North Broadway, they said.
That was because of the model airplanes that Clarence, now 84, built from scratch, starting with trips to the lumber yard. His planes are still there, painted silver and propped on tripods above the shop in the backyard. Each bird measures several feet.
They aren’t just any old planes — a B-29 and a P-38 — the first of which Clarence flew on in the U.S. Air Force.
He and Vi both grew up in Sultan. They met at a high school football game in Monroe. Vi’s friend wanted to stop by the dance afterward, but she wasn’t allowed to go. A young man named Clarence offered her a ride.
He had a brand-new 1954 Ford with a white interior.
The whole way, Clarence fussed at her for her muddy boots, she said. There wasn’t much she could do. It’d been a rainy night.
In the Air Force, Clarence became a crew chief, in charge of the plane while it was on the ground, and overseeing the maintenance. He flew as a scanner, “a fancy name for a gunner,” in a B-29 radar squadron, he said.
The squadron flew around the U.S. to visit radar stations, he said. They tested equipment at various bases by trying to sneak in without detection.
“It was a very quiet tour of duty,” he said.
Clarence left the military as a staff sergeant after his brother, Robert, was killed in combat in Korea. Clarence worked at Scott Paper in Everett for 37 years.
“Shift work was the nuts,” he said. “It changed every week, days, graveyards.”
For two decades, Vi, now 79, was an aide for the Everett School District, mostly in the kindergarten and fifth-grade classrooms. The Lentzes raised two girls, Diane and Donna, and a boy, David.
David Lentz, now 56, has two children. One of them, Andrew, 24, put together model airplane kits with his grandfather as a kid.
The same kit planes hang over the Datsun 280Z in Clarence’s shop. It’s waiting on a new engine.
According to his wife, he’s always been clever, quick at figuring out how to fix things.
For each of his planes, Clarence started with a block of wood. There was no urgency, just a way to pass the time, he said.
“I didn’t have any special tools,” he said. “I probably sawed and I had a sander.”
Clarence takes the planes down every once in a while for cleaning. He built the shop out back in the 1980s, when David got into racing cars, before he married.
Clarence fashioned the planes’ wooden propellers so they’d turn in the wind. When the propellers started to stick, David Lentz made the aluminum replacements at his own shop, Sno-Lynn Machine, along the Mukilteo Speedway.
Under way now in Clarence’s garage is a wooden P-51 Mustang. The wingspan is about 8 feet. Someday, the plan is for David to paint it and hang it up outside his business. The time is hard to come by, though, while he’s working seven days a week.
Clarence used to come and help with the machining. Together, father and son would watch restored World War II-era planes fly overhead around Paine Field.
In early June, Clarence’s strawberries were ripening in his garden. Vi likes to quilt.
They don’t travel anymore, she said, though they will drive to Darrington this summer to see daughter Diane.
Vi estimates that Clarence finished the planes above the shop maybe 10 years ago. It’s hard to say now.
Time becomes less important, she said. It goes by, and one day, they just stopped noticing so much.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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