Amazing Grace: La Conner centenarian celebrates 100th birthday

As a youth, Grace Hubbard experienced history.

As an adult, she helped make history.

And now, having completed her first century of life, the local icon is keenly focused on the here and now, checking off a diverse to-do list of activities at La Conner Retirement Inn and the community's senior center as well as outings with longstanding friends.

Shortly after her 100th birthday this month, Hubbard enjoyed dinner with one of those friends, Joan Cross, former owner of Balance Point Physical Therapy.

"I met her when we were agitating," Hubbard says, a wide smile across her face, referring to the 1980s when both were engaged in person-to-person diplomacy with peace advocates in the then-Soviet Union and protesting nuclear proliferation.

"We succeeded in getting Skagit County declared a nuclear free zone," Hubbard recalled in a interview last week with the Weekly News.

Perhaps due on some level to the grassroots efforts here in Skagit County and elsewhere around the world, geopolitics were influenced – for the better, she said.

"Reagan and Gorbachev agreed on a major arms control treaty," she noted. "Back then, people were terrified about the threat of nuclear war."

It was a classic case of thinking globally and acting locally.

During that era when rents were low and town meetings long, Hubbard joined Cross and others in La Conner on a sister city outreach with Olga, a small Russian city on the shores of the Sea of Japan near Vladivostok. Locals involved in the project gathered in Swinomish Village one Sunday for a photo to be sent with correspondence and a song penned by singer-songwriter Holly Graham to the people of Olga.

Hubbard notes with pride that still has a copy of that group photograph.

"We didn't hear back from Olga," Hubbard recounted. "But years later someone did find the correspondence we sent."

Hubbard is proud that she has spent nearly half her life in La Conner – a life, it turns out, that began half a world away, in Cairo, Egypt, in 1923. Egypt was a British protectorate and Hubbard's father was assigned to Cairo for his work with an oil company.

By her teen years, Hubbard was home in the United Kingdom. She was there in 1936 to join the public procession that viewed King George V, great-grandfather to King Charles III, lying in state at Westminster Hall in London.

"My dad," she said, "impressed upon me that we were taking part in a very historical moment."

Hubbard remained in the UK through World War II, during which she served with the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a meteorology assistant in the weather office.

"It was nice duty," she said, pointing out that the WAAF was attached to the Royal Air Force, with many among its ranks decorated for gallantry during the Battle of Britain.

Its main perk for her was meeting future husband Jack Hubbard, an American who flew U.S. B-17 missions with the famed "Mighty Eighth," the greatest air armada in history.

The couple was wed on Christmas Eve 1945 at Cookham outside London. They soon moved to Jack Hubbard's hometown of Berkeley, California, where both enrolled at the University of California.

Grace Hubbard majored in math and entered education while her husband, attending on the GI Bill, pursued a degree that would lead to a fruitful career in the mental health field.

"It was a very nice time in our lives," she reflected. "We made lifelong friends."

Two of those friends, John and Inez Garcia, would ultimately follow the Hubbards to La Conner.

Moving to La Conner from the Bay Area was part of what Grace Hubbard fondly terms "Jack's good idea." The Hubbards were poised to retire early, in their 50s, by which time they had sailed on North Puget Sound.

"We were out on those gorgeous waters," said Grace Hubbard, "and we were hooked from then on."

She said that inspired Jack Hubbard to build a boat large enough that they could live on. The next task was to find a marina where they could moor their 30-foot vessel.

"How we came to La Conner," Grace Hubbard explained, "is that the only marina we could find where we could live aboard our boat was Shelter Bay if we had a lot there."

They ended up building two houses in Shelter Bay, residing on Makah Drive for more than four decades.

When the Hubbards settled here, La Conner was still a sleepy fishing village not well known outside the area. What the town was perhaps best known for, at least in local circles, was its collection of colorful characters.

"That," she said, "was part of its charm."

When they visited Europe in the 1990s, Hubbard said "people there knew about La Conner."

The Hubbards, married 74 years before Jack Hubbard's passing at age 99, were blessed with two sons, Stephen and Peter, eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren who reside variously in Washington, California, Montana and the District of Columbia.

Grace Hubbard credits good genes and remaining active as keys to her longevity. For the past year she has been a resident at La Conner Retirement Inn, an experience she enjoys daily.

"I'm so happy here," Hubbard said. "I love my apartment and the people who are here."

Best of all, she said, "I've made many friends."

Much as she's done for the past 100 years.