Inevitably, when someone reaches 100, the question is asked:
What’s the secret to your longevity?
Friday, the answer was all around Sarah Marguerite Laramie Baxter.
“That’s why I have lived so long, because I’ve had good friends and family,” said Baxter. And that’s not to mention an occasional sip of Scotch and a streak of stubbornness, says her family.
Baxter’s many friends and family members gathered at the Lakeshore retirement community on Rainier Avenue Friday afternoon to mark her 100th birthday the next day and to listen to the music that provided the soundtrack to her long life.
At the end of the party, they stopped by Baxter’s chair to wish her well and remind her of plans coming up soon. The affection was obvious.
Baxter was born on Park Avenue in Renton Feb. 20, 1910. Her parents, Josephine and John Laramie, had a houseboat just a couple hundred feet from what is now the Lakeshore. Her mother worked on a ship with a restaurant not far away.
In those intervening 10 decades, Baxter has witnessed Renton’s growth from a small town with its wooden sidewalks and streets filled with horses – and few cars – to an industrial city that helped give birth to the jet age.
Baxter raised her family in Renton, which now includes eight grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and a great-great grandchild.
She has been part of Renton’s history.
In 1956, as the wife of Renton’s first full-time mayor, Joseph R. Baxter, she christened the first Boeing KC-135, the “City of Renton.” Renton workers built 820 KC-135s, still the Air Force’s prime aerial refueling airplane. Production stopped in 1966.
Baxter’s family has compiled a history of Sarah’s life that they shared at the party. It includes a photograph of Baxter christening the KC-135.
She attended Earlington Hill school, Central School and Renton High School. Sarah and Joseph married in 1929. They lived in north Renton. As a young woman, she worked for Peterson’s lunchroom near Paccar and later Boldt’s cafeteria at Boeing in Renton during World War II.
They bought Baxter’s Motel on Rainier Avenue in 1942. After her husband’s death in 1962, she operated the motel until 1973. She moved into the Lakeshore in 2004.
Joseph Baxter was a Renton City Council member and then mayor from 1949 to 1960. During part of that time, Gerard Shellan was the city’s part-time city attorney, before he was appointed to the King County Superior Court.
Shellan is married to the Baxter’s daughter Barbara and he presided over the festivities on Friday. A special guest was Mayor Denis Law, who proclaimed Friday as “Sarah Baxter Day” in Renton.
