Unable to party, loved ones throw parade in honor of 90th birthday

MOSES LAKE — She raised six children with the help of her oldest son, always juggling several jobs at a time, in a home with wall-to-wall beds. She was the president of the Sons of Norway heritage group for 16 years.

And though she had originally wanted to take her family on a cruise to celebrate her 90th birthday, Lillian “Rosie” Lucke’s loved ones adjusted to the ongoing pandemic by instead holding a parade in her honor.

Organized by one of her six children, dozens of family, friends and even a firefighter drove through the parking lot of Pioneer Village, a senior living apartment complex in Moses Lake, parading past Lucke as she sat under a canopy and waved back at them.

“You can’t imagine how I’m feeling — happy, crying, memories, the whole nine yards,” Lucke said. “My family is wonderful.”

Lucke moved to Central Washington in 1950, having been born in North Dakota and already having tried her hand at the East Coast. She first moved in with an aunt in Spokane, teaching dance at a local studio, before Ritzville and eventually Moses Lake, where she has been a staple of the community ever since.

“My mother said, remember, it’s all a different world out there, but travel now and do whatever you want to do before you get married and start raising the family,” Lucke recalled. “Go west, go to see the ocean.”

It would be more than a decade after she had moved to Washington before she saw the ocean, but she did.

She raised five boys and a daughter — girls are the hardest to raise, she notes. She would often bring the youngest children with her as she cleaned houses so she could save on babysitting. She did everything she could to keep the family off welfare and with a roof over their heads, taking part-time jobs at a motel, a hardware store, a laundromat or replacing a farmer’s irrigation lines with her boys.

“We had our ups and downs, but they all graduated, and they all have wonderful families,” Lucke said. “It’s been a tough ride but a good one. And here I am!”

Once the parade was over, Lucke was wheeled over to the Moses Lake High School parking lot where the crowd had gathered — six feet apart from one another — to sing her happy birthday in front of a float decorated with her favorite animals, hummingbirds.

Lucke said she hopes to be able to have a real party with her loved ones once the pandemic is over and social distancing restrictions can be lifted. And she expects to have many more after this year, too, she adds.

“My dad lived to be 102, so I get 12 more years,” Lucke said, a twinkle in her eye.