Local man turns 100

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE

He was born three years before the Titanic sank in 1912.

These days, however, there isn’t too much that brings Max Summerson down.

Not two bouts with cancer.

Not the loss of his second wife, Goldie, 16 years ago.

On March 28, the Mountlake Terrace resident turns 100.

He sometimes uses a cane but Max still keeps as active as possible, drives, and lives with his son, Jack, 64, in a 1940s-era house he’s been in since moving with his family to what would become Mountlake Terrace in 1953.

Born in Sinnamahoning, Pa., Max grew up on five different Pennsylvania farms. After spending time in the Boy Scouts, he and his younger brother Cardell went to work as glassblowers at the Warren Mirror Works in Warren, Pa., where his father worked as the supervisor.

Eventually, Max and Cardell moved to Seattle in 1931, following his father.

“When we came out here, my brother and I went all over Seattle looking for work,” Max said. They found the going tough during the Great Depression. Not only were jobs scarce, where jobs existed, unions kept outsiders away.

“There we were, we were sitting there high and dry,” Max said.

He took several jobs to make ends meet.

“We cut wood for the county,” Max said, recalling that he was paid $1 for a cord of wood.

“We got $3 a day,” he said. “We were glad to get it because there was nothing to get there.”

He spent 16 years in the merchant marines and also worked at Seattle’s shipyards.

Max delivered packages for the U.S. Postal Service and worked as a caddy at the Richmond Highlands Golf Course. For years, he worked for his father, silvering glass mirrors.

“He even built a chicken house for a woman,” Jack said.

In those early days before the city incorporated, the area was known to locals as Edmonds Route 2, the Summersons recalled.

“We had Edmonds addresses,” Max said.

The old man of the time was Seattleite Harold Thorne, a Seattle School District custodian who ran a 5-acre mink farm blocks from the Summerson house, which sat, alone, amidst thick stands of tall trees.

“He didn’ t even have a car and he’d come out on weekends riding his bicycle,” Jack recalled. “He was probably the oldest resident around here.”

In those days, Jack was just a boy — -one who developed a keen interest in rocks.

In the years that followed, Jack and his father would share their interest in rocks and gems, spending much of their time engrossed with polishing and finishing gems in the field known as lapidary.

That’s how Natalie Everett met Max and Jack, former vice president of the Maplewood Rock and Gem Club in Edmonds.

The Edmonds resident says she developed much of her interest in jewelry making from the Sommersons, who have both taught the art. Jack also is a silversmith.

“He taught people how to polish rough, semi-precious stones,” she said.

Everett recalled that until very recently, Max was as active as any man 25 years his junior.

“One of my memories of Max was about five or six years ago,” she said. “We were volunteering to do some yard work over at the Maplewood Rock and Gem Club and the grass had grown up really high. Max was a steady, steady worker and he rode that lawnmower. Jack and I had stopped and had a can of soda and Max was still working.”