Richard and Stella Land chosen as Cornucopia royalty
With so many trees, bushes and flowers to care for, Richard and Stella Land spend a lot of time in the backyard of their home on Scenic Hill, just east of downtown Kent.
And with dramatic views north across the Kent Valley all the way to the Seattle skyline, it’s easy to understand why the couple has lived in the same home, and in Kent, for 46 years.
“I like it,” Stella said of living in Kent. “We’re close to a lot of different areas. And when we go to the other side of the mountains, it’s like being back in Nebraska.”
Because of their long-time ties to Kent, Richard and Stella Land haven been selected as the Old Timers King and Queen by the Kent Historical Society. They’ll be among the reigning royalty as part of Kent Cornucopia Days, July 10-13.
Richard, 82, and Stella, 80, will represent the community’s history when they ride in a convertible in the festival’s Grand Parade at 2 p.m. July 13. The parade runs along Fourth Avenue, starting at Saar Street and ending at James Street.
The couple grew up in Bridgeport, Neb. They started to date in high school.
“He was a city slicker and I was a farm girl,” Stella said.
They married in Nebraska in 1946, after Richard served two years as an Army infantryman in Germany during World War II.
With so many of his high school classmates drafted into military service before graduation, Richard decided to enlist at age 17 so he could finish high school before joining the service.
“A week after graduation, they invited me back,” said Richard, who rode the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner for four days with thousands of troops from New York to Scotland, to serve in the war.
He returned stateside to settle down with Stella, and the couple later moved from Nebraska to Colorado, where Richard attended the Colorado School of Mines to become an engineer. In the late 1950s, they moved to Ephrata in Eastern Washington, where Richard worked as a construction engineer at a Titan missile site. They moved to Kent in 1962 when Richard took an engineering job with Boeing to work on the Minuteman missile program.
Richard worked 25 years at Boeing, including about 10 years with Boecon, a former construction subsidiary of Boeing. He retired in 1988.
The couple has watched Kent change a lot over the years as the city has grown to its present size of 86,000 residents. Richard served for about 10 years on the Kent Planning Commission in the 1960s.
“We put together the city’s first comprehensive plan,” Richard said. “They’ve pretty well followed our plan. But we didn’t think big enough.”
Stella said it became obvious that downtown Kent would become a bottleneck because of the increased traffic from the valley to the East Hill and because cars have to stop for the trains going through town.
“It still is a bottleneck,” Stella said.
The couple raised three children. Their son, Jim, lives in Kent; daughter, Jennifer, lives in Des Moines; and daughter, Holly, lives in Chattaroy in Eastern Washington. They have six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Richard and Stella Land will celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary July 28.
The magic, as they say, is still there.
“We fight a lot and get it out of our system,” Stella said about the keys to staying married so long. “It’s a lot of give and take.”
Stella is a member of the Eastbrook Garden Club and on the board of the Kent Historical Society. She taught school for a few years in Colorado and became a homemaker when the family moved to Kent.
“I come out and pull weeds when she’s at garden shows,” Richard said.
But Richard does more than pull weeds. He recently built a gazebo, 20 feet by 40 feet, in the northwest corner of the backyard. The structure includes a water wheel, 14 feet in diameter.
The couple will host a neighborhood National Night Out party in their backyard on Aug. 5. National Night Out is an event to help neighbors to get to know each other in order to help prevent crime.
First, however, they have a parade to ride in as the King and Queen.
“I guess I survived long enough to earn it,” Richard said.
Contact Steve Hunter at 253-872-6600, ext. 5052 or shunter@reporternewspapers.com.
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