Profile

Grand Marshall Arvid Soderberg reflects on 100 years

by Phillip E. Honstein

Arvid Soderberg describes Gotland, the island where he spent his earliest years, as "flat country. There were no trees. It was more like desert." Electricity, telephones, and indoor plumbing were non-existent. The Baltic Sea froze in winter and the young Soderberg skated on the Bursvik Bay, sometimes using a sail to catch the wind.

Soderberg, the Grand Marshall of this year's Old Settler's Parade, will be 101 years old on September 12.

On the island was a farm where he and his parents lived. To pay rent, the family gave produce, grain, milk and transportation to a local pastor who owned the property.

Arvid's job was to drive the pastor by horse and buggy, and to wait outside during house calls.

"I think I only saw one or two automobiles," Soderberg told the Record-Journal. "It was okay, we thought it was nice (to own a car), but nobody could afford one. It was like trying to buy an airplane today, or worse," he said.

As a boy, Soderberg heard the war raging around the small, neutral island where he lived. "It was tense, especially where I lived in the middle of the Baltic Sea," he said. That was in 1914, when the Great War broke out in Europe. Although Soderberg had served in the Swedish Navy, he was too young for the first World War, and too old for the second.

It was in 1926 that a 26-year-old Soderberg took a 10-day steamship ride to Seattle, Wash., courtesy of a $350 ticket that was a gift to the family. He arrived with two preoccupations: repaying the $350, and earning enough money to return home.

"I was terribly homesick," Soderberg said. He was unable speak English when he first arrived. "I learned by watching silent movies," he said.

Soderberg built cabinets in Seattle, and by 1927 he was successful enough to buy a used 1926 Chevrolet. That was also the year he married, at the age of 30, Ethel Hanson.

The two met five months before at a dance. For their wedding, they drove the new Aurora route to Bellingham where Ethel's family lived. They made their home in Seattle and began raising their two children.

Soderberg remembers people in Seattle living in cardboard-box "Hoovervilles" in the 1930's. "Those were hard times," Soderberg said. "The Depression actually drove me from Seattle."

The Soderbergs moved to Ferndale, leaving behind a Seattle that had not yet built the Space Needle and whose tallest building "is just a little building now."

Ethel's parents helped the couple by loaning money for rent, a cow, and chickens. Soderberg worked as a cabinet maker, another child was born, and eventually the family bought a 40-acre farm on Olson Road for $2,000. "The ranch was just a family affair," he said. "I worked in town to support it."

Soderberg remembers August, 1945: "It felt terrible," he said of the bombing of Japan. "I thought it was bad, and it was. It showed we had the power to destroy the whole world if we wanted to, and that's not a good feeling."

In 1953, Ethel died suddenly of a heart attack. It was another three years before Arvid would remarry long-time friend Evelyn Mort in a union that created a family of ten children.

In 1954, Arvid purchased his first television, a black and white model. In the 1950s he also built a large cross above the alter in Central Lutheran Church in Bellingham which is still there today.

Soderberg described Sputnik I, launched by the Soviet Union in October, 1957, as "quite a deal."

In 1963, Soderberg was working at Bellingham Sash & Door's old Holly Str. location when he heard of John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.

The same year, Soderberg attempted to retire at age 65, but it proved to be difficult. He began doing just "a few jobs," but he ended up busier than before. "I didn't actually quit working until I was in my 80's," he said.

Soderberg values the traveling he has done. "It's important to have a place you call home, and also to travel," he said. "I think that's good." He has driven down the west coast, has been to New York, and has returned to Sweden three times: in 1965 on his first airplane flight, in 1971, and in 1994 at 96 years of age.

In 1996, after 39 years of marriage, Evelyn passed away. All ten of their children are alive and have had various careers, ranging from law enforcement to teaching at Western Washington University. There are 22 grandchildren and even more great-grandchildren.

"I hear from some of them every day," Soderberg said. "I think it's wonderful, the older you get you depend on your kids more."

Soderberg said that he tries to live a happy life. "It helps you live longer," he said. "You're surroundings help. If you're surrounded by people who like you or love you, that helps you."

Soderberg said he has had "a pretty good life, no major sicknesses, no major surgeries except a knee surgery -- the knees wear out when you get older."

In comparing the past to the present, Soderberg said, "Things were so different, us old folks we can't keep up. We're going forward with computers and that's something I don't even know about."

Soderberg used a computer for the first time last year, and expressed his amazement at how quickly he could send and receive e-mail to Sweden. "It would be nice to learn (computers)," he said.

Although Soderberg's license was valid at age 99, he was unable to renew it last year when he turned 100. "It was a bad mistake, I walked in (to the Department of Motor Vehicles) with a cane. They don't like that. I don't know why, that's not that important when driving a car," he said.

Soderberg has lived in Bellingham's Parkway Chateau, a luxurious retirement community, for three years.

 

Published August 1999 in the Record Journal Newspaper.