Kirkland resident Nellie Youngquist is a very private person and didn’t want a big fuss for her 105th Birthday on Nov. 25, which was on Thanksgiving Day this year. In fact, she has never paid much attention to her birthday and hadn’t even noticed that it came on Thanksgiving every four years!

She says that now she is older the important thing is to, “Enjoy each day as it comes.”

Youngquist was born November 25, 1905, in Oklahoma but moved to Burlington, Wash. at the age of 4 or 5. She was one of four children. She says her mother was an angel who made sure to get them all to Sunday school early in the morning each week.

Youngquist went to Burlington High School and in her senior year got a job wrapping coins at the local bank. After high school the man at the bank suggested it was time for her to go to Business College so she went to Seattle and started school. But after a month she decided she didn’t want her father to have the expense of paying her room and board so she went to work doing accounting for the Shell Company for about a year. During this time, the man at the bank came down from Burlington and proposed to her! She and Gus Youngquist had worked side by side at the bank and were good friends and “had stepped out a few times” but she didn’t expect him to propose.

She moved back to Burlington and married in 1927 and worked with her husband at the First National Bank for six years before starting a family. She had three children and the hardest time in her life was when she lost their eldest son. Youngquist remembers very clearly her son was 2 years and 9 months when he died of Tuberculosis Meningitis.

There were other tough times, too.

During the depression, the bank she worked at was consolidated and the Youngquists lost a lot money because all the board members at the bank had been required to hold a certain amount of stock and they had to “toss in” their stocks. Gus’s brothers who had farms helped them through “a lot of hard knocks.”

Her husband then got a job working for five different county associations, visiting farmers and trying to help them get service and loans through the Federal Land Bank of Spokane. Youngquist remembers him waiting for hours for a farmer to finish milking his cows to give him a check for $10 to avoid foreclosure. Later, that farmer sold his property on the river for more than $1 million.

“Hard times and good times,” said Youngquist.

She loves basketball and lights up when asked about it. One of her favorite stories is when her grandfather paid $1 for a season ticket for the high school basketball games to give to her rather than her brothers because she was class salutatorian for excellent grades. She was a devoted Sonics fan and feels badly about them leaving Seattle and is now rooting for the Portland Trailblazers.

Youngquist has been a widow since 1977 and moved to Madison House Retirement in Kirkland to be closer to her family two years ago.

She has a daughter who is now a retired nurse and a son who at one time was the Cowlitz County Commissioner but is now happy as a farmer away from the politics. Youngquist has five grandchildren (two grand-daughters who travel in banking) and nine great grandchildren.

Youngquist has always been organized and is still interested in numbers. She gets along very well with a walker and keeps her apartment impeccable. She also enjoys the daily newspaper and goes to her favorite hairdresser every week.