A lifetime of happiness

Gladys Wills has many happy memories. Her 100th birthday celebration, July 4, is expected to be one more.

Her daughter-in-law, Carol, expects a large crowd of family and friends to gather at their Lake Forest Park home to wish Wills a happy birthday today. Among her guests will be her four adult grandsons and five great-grandchildren — all of whom affectionately call her “Grammy.”

“Without children, the world would be very bleak,” Wills said as she sat at home on June 26.

‘Happy days’

Growing up with her one brother and two sisters in Kent was “lots of fun,” Wills remembers.

Trips to the Hood Canal, swimming in Lake Angle near SeaTac and of course pulling on ice skates every January once the flood waters froze in the valley were all great times, she said.

“The older (kids) took care of the younger ones,” she said. “My brother got us skates and we’d go skating off. Those were happy days.”

The radio was also a source of great entertainment, according to Wills.

“We’d all gather around and then we heard the noise and I could remember that we were so tickled to hear the noise come out of that little box.”

Although she can recall the “plop, plop, plop” of horses hooves on cobblestone in the area, Wills said she could hardly wait to get her driver’s permit. Once she did, her older stepbrothers taught her how to drive.

“I got my license as soon as I could,” Wills said. “I thought if anyone could (drive) I could.”

After graduating from Kent High School, Wills planned to attend college and become a teacher. But her life took a slightly different turn.

“I got married instead,” she said, her soft smile hinting at more happy memories.

She met her late husband, Howard, at the Seattle First Presbyterian Church and decided to elope on May 24, 1940. After some trouble finding where to obtain a marriage license, the pair returned to their individual family homes. They didn’t tell anyone about their marriage right away.

“We liked our lives the way they were; we had to do things gradually, I suppose,” Wills said.

Howard served in the Army for four years, but did not serve overseas because he had polio, according to Wills’ son, Forrest. His father was stationed in both New Jersey and Arkansas in the Army Signal Corps when his parents were newlyweds.

‘Quite a picture’

“Tell the story about the tarantulas,” Carol asked her mother-in-law while the three sat together in their home one recent afternoon.

Wills smile faded. She thought.

“When (Howard) was recovering from his polio in Tennessee,” she began and stopped. “Oh, Carol, you tell it.”

“But you tell it so funny,” Carol said.

While taking a drive in a two seat roadster, Wills said, the couple saw a group of tarantulas who were trying to cross the road. When the car stopped, Howard went “to poke at them” with his cane and fell down.

The scene was, “quite a picture” according to Wills.

“He was out in the middle of the road and the tarantulas were crawling around him and I was screaming,” Wills said. “I berated him really good after that.”

The couple had their son, Forrest, in 1947 and moved to West Seattle in 1955. As a child, Forrest spent time at the family’s summer place on Hood Canal. As an adult, he remembers how a pet duck named Rover was just another part of their family.

“He would go from window to window looking for my mom and dad,” Forrest said.

The wayward mallard duck Wills affectionately named Rover came to live with the family in the late 1960s after Wills discovered he was the only duckling left behind in a neighbor’s yard. She took him home and put him in her slipper. From that day forward, Rover had a tendency to like women’s shoes. One day, he left the yard and stayed by a pair of their neighbor’s shoes. Wills said she received a phone call to come pick up her duck.

“Rover thought the shoes were female ducks,” she said. “He was going to stay with them so we had to get some slippers for our own back yard.”

Happiness today

Stories about her mother-in-law’s long and happy life are entertaining to hear, according to Carol.

“It’s fun to jog her memory and get her to reminisce,” she said.

Wills moved into her son and daughter-in-law’s home in Lake Forest Park in January 2001.

“It felt like the right thing to do,” Forrest, 61, said. “We always give her things to look forward to — a wedding, a college graduation.”

Although macular degeneration has limited her eyesight and made it difficult for her to do some of the things she once enjoyed, Wills isn’t one to complain, Carol said.

“She has an amazing attitude,” she said. “We enjoy her immensely.”

Wills said she isn’t sure what her birthday wish will be but she did offer a little advice for anyone who hopes to reach their own 100th milestone.

“You just have to bend and take the punches when they come in life,” Wills said. “Be happy. There’s so much to be happy about. You don’t have to look very hard.”