Helen Turner celebrates 100th birthday
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Helen Turner got royal treatment on her 100th birthday.
Helen Turner talks with a friend during her 100th birthday party.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Helen Turner got royal treatment at her 100th birthday party.
MOSES LAKE — Helen Turner was a little girl in the Roaring ’20s, a teenager in the Great Depression, and a World War II bride. Her family and friends were determined to celebrate her 100th birthday.
Her friend Annabelle Scriven said 100 years is a milestone, and a big party was planned. But the COVID-19 outbreak ended those plans.
About 30 people, including her sons Ken and Dean, other family members and friends, attended an outdoor party in Turner’s honor recently.
She got her own special chair in the bed of a pickup, above the crowd. “So she could see and be seen,” Scriven said.
She got her choice of cake. “Her favorite is strawberry shortcake. So I made a strawberry shortcake for her,” Scriven said.
Turner has been through a lot and seen a lot in her life, Scriven said.
Her son Ken said Helen was born in Oroville, near the Canadian border.
“We ranched up there,” Ken Turner said. “My grandfather homesteaded.” (Federal land was available at no cost to people who claimed it and made improvements. The practice was known as homesteading.)
“She’s a great mom,” Ken Turner said.
Helen and her husband Blaine Turner grew up in the Okanogan Highlands. They married in 1942, after Blaine was drafted into the U.S. Army.
“She was a war bride,” Ken Turner said.
Helen did what a lot of young wives did and followed her husband during his training period. Blaine’s unit was trained for desert warfare, Ken Turner said, but it was sent to Alaska.
The family returned to the Oroville-Chesaw area after the war.
“My dad was a rural letter carrier,” Ken Turner said. Blaine once delivered mail on horseback when a landslide closed the road. Helen worked as a grocery store clerk, and the couple ran the cattle ranch in their spare time.
They moved to Odessa in 1959, Ken Turner said, and Helen worked at the Odessa post office while Blaine delivered the mail. Helen put her two sons through college with her hard work, Ken Turner said.
Helen and Blaine Turner moved to Moses Lake after retiring from the Postal Service and had a ranch for a few years in Block 40, north of Moses Lake, Ken Turner said, before retiring to Cascade Valley. Blaine Turner died in 2010.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].
