In her 106 years, Grace Bargreen Parsons was a farm girl and music teacher, a mother and civic leader, a state senator’s wife and businesswoman, and a golfer, still playing long after her 100th birthday.
The matriarch of a prominent Everett family, Parsons died March 12 in Palm Springs, where she spent her later years. On Feb. 25, she was surrounded by family as she celebrated her 106th birthday.
“Mainly, she was just very busy,” said her son Howard J. “Howie” Bargreen, president of Everett’s Bargreen Coffee Co.
His family history dates back more than a century in Everett. It was 1898 when the Bargreen family established the business that became the Bargreen Coffee Co. And in the 1930s, the Bargreens founded Crown Distributing Co., a beverage distributor. Howie Bargreen’s late father, Howard S. Bargreen, served more than 20 years in the Legislature, part of that time as a state senator.
Howie Bargreen recalled how his parents moved the family to Olympia during the session. “That’s the way she wanted it,” he said. “She liked the social life down there, and had a lot of friends.”
Parsons’ roots were rural, but the land where she was raised near Roy is now well known as Wilcox Family Farms. She was born in Seattle to Judson and Betty Wilcox on Feb. 25, 1909. Soon after Grace Cohoe Wilcox was born, they moved to land in the Mount Rainier foothills. Today, visitors to the farm may still see her family’s original home.
“One of the things she really liked was to go to the farm where her relatives were,” said Howie Bargreen, recalling his mother’s family reunions and outings to Mount Rainier.
Gigi Burke, one of Parsons’ 14 grandchildren, said her grandmother “was kind of a tomboy. I think that came from growing up on the farm.”
Parsons majored in music at what is now Washington State University and was an accomplished singer. She taught music for a year in the Arlington School District. By 1931, she had met and married Howard Bargreen.
Three of the Bargreens’ four children, Sam, Sharon and Claudette, preceded her in death. Sharon Bargreen Blunt was Burke’s mother.
Melinda Bargreen, Howie Bargreen’s wife, said Parsons’ philosophy was that life must go on. “You look to the future instead of back on your tragedies,” she said. “I don’t think she ever got over those losses, but so many of us get stuck in one groove of regret. She never did.”
Parsons stayed involved with her family, friends and community. After her first husband died in 1987, she moved to Palm Springs for the winter. She later married Edgar Parsons, who died earlier this year.
“I always look forward, not backward,” Parsons said in a 2009 interview on her 100th birthday. She was back in Everett for a visit that year, and still playing golf at Everett Golf &County Club. In Palm Springs, she played golf at Seven Lakes Country Club well past her 100th birthday.
Parsons said in 2009 that she treasured her Everett memories.
In the 1930s, Howard and Grace Bargreen bought more than 20 acres on Rucker Hill, where they built their home. Other family lived nearby. She was instrumental in founding the Assistance League in Everett and the Everett Opera Guild. She was active in the Everett Woman’s Book Club, the Everett Golf &Country Club and a women’s musical club. She belonged to Everett’s First Presbyterian Church, and the Bargreens were among founding families of the Greater Everett Community Foundation.
Howie Bargreen remembers his parents’ business at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, when the Everett couple moved their family to Seattle for six months. Along with being a lawmaker, Howard Bargreen was on the commission that planned the Century 21 Exposition. He and his wife operated an international marketplace concessions business at the fair.
They hosted tours and dinners for governors and other dignitaries at the Seattle fair. And in 1964, they moved on to the New York World’s Fair, where they ran Bargreen’s Buffet and another restaurant, Howie Bargreen said.
In earlier years, he remembers camping trips to Canada. His mother enjoyed trout fishing. “We’d go way up into Canada, to these little lakes, and she’d cook the fish in a cast-iron frying pan,” he said.
The family had a summer home at Lake Stevens, and his parents hosted annual parties at the Lundeen Resort, which had a dance hall on the lake.
“She loved a party,” said Melinda Bargreen, who made baked Alaska, Parsons’ favorite dessert, for the 106th birthday party. “She was just delighted. She ate it, looked up at me and said ‘Yummy.’”
Burke, who has worked in business and served on the Everett City Council and local boards, said her grandmother encouraged her to be involved.
“She always talked about the community, more than anything else,” Burke said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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