Gene Harwood still dancing at 101

MOSES LAKE — Gene Harwood said he is looking forward to the next reunion at his alma mater. He might not have been the oldest at the St. John all-school reunion last time, but this time might be different. Harwood celebrated his 101st birthday last week.

He’s been a farmer his entire working life, starting with the days he helped his dad on the family place near St. John. “We farmed with mules when I was a kid,” Harwood remembered. And in the 1920s plenty of farmers still used real horsepower to get the harvested grain to the elevator. “My dad and I each had an iron-wheeled wagon we hauled the wheat into town with.”

The town of St. John had its own high school then, and Harwood graduated in 1936. That was a bad time to graduate, it being the middle of the Depression, and jobs were hard to find. Harwood opted to work on the family farm in the summer, where he earned enough money to attend school at Oregon State Agricultural College (now Oregon State University) in the fall and winter. Along with his work in the fields he kept chickens. ”Not a lot – it was 300 (chickens), or something like that.”

A young man could get through a year of college on a summer’s earnings if he was careful, Harwood said. “We could go to college in those days for $600.”

He graduated from OSU with a degree in agriculture, and went back to the farm in St. John to work. The Harwood family built a mill to produce flour, and running the mill was considered essential war work, so Gene Harwood worked the mill through most of World War II. He was scheduled for induction into the armed forces in 1945. “I went in and took my physical the day they dropped the bomb,” he said. That was Aug. 6, 1945.

The family closed the mill at the end of the war, and found an interesting new opportunity in central Washington, where the Columbia Basin irrigation project was opening up new farmlands. The Harwoods bought property in 1946, and Harwood moved to Moses Lake in 1950.

He worked his farm until his retirement in 1983, with his wife Alice and daughters Debbie Robel and Jan Timm. Jan’s husband Al and a son-in-law now run the farm, she said. The original Harwood homestead in St. John is still owned and operated by the family.

After he retired, Harwood built a house on Moses Lake. “It was a cow pasture when I built this house,” he said. Gene and his wife spent a few years traveling around the country after he retired, and were enthusiastic square dancers. Alice passed away four years ago.

Harwood is still a square dancer, although he said he’s slowed down. He still mows the lawn, Jan Timm said, and drives himself to lunch at the senior center on weekdays.

The secret to a long life, he said, is “no smoking and no booze.” But he comes from a long-lived family, Jan Timm said – his grandmother lived to be 98 years of age, his mom 96. He’s the oldest kid in the family, and has a brother and sister still living.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.