Do you envision it as a time for quiet and the rocking chair? Well, if you are Duvall resident Carroll Whipple, you’d better think again.

Whipple, who will turn 100 in August, is still swimming, still driving, still making plans for the future and still very much involved in learning new things. She’s “thinking about” taking another job teaching swimming in the next few months, and just started ukulele lessons.

“I don’t want to teach five hours a day anymore,” she admits, but “maybe two hours a day would be perfect.”
This long time Duvall resident started life on an apple ranch in Chelan enjoying the farm life until the depression hit.

“Grandad bought the Chelan homestead and other property in the area and gave the apple ranch to my parents as a wedding present,” she explains. But there was a bad year. The drought in 1920 – 21 was followed by a good apple year. Too good, it turned out, as there was a glut on the market and the apple crop didn’t bring in enough to save the farm. So her family spent a few years moving around Chelan, over to Renton, and into Seattle. At one point, her parents bought a grocery store and the family lived in the back. That was when she attended Garfield High School, which the teenage Carroll loved. Soon, though, there was another move and this time it was outside the Garfield School District. No problem for her. She fudged the address just a little, and spent an hour and a half each way to and from school until she could graduate.