In eight months, Frances VanderWel will be 100, an age that is met by fewer than 100,000 Americans. She has spent nearly her entire life in Washington state, save for the time immediately following her birth in Montana. On July 24, the Bonney Lake Senior Center will host a centenarian birthday party a few months ahead of schedule, to allow her grandchildren, nephews and nieces to make the trip out.

VanderWel spends each Wednesday at the senior center with her knitting club, the Knitpickers, making new blankets to donate to children in need. Her son-in-law, Jim Backus, comes out from Tacoma to take her to the center and visit her on those days.

VanderWel was born in Butte, Mont. in 1910. Her family moved to downtown Seattle by the time she reached third grade and they lived there through her high school years.

As a teen, she took the bus out to Sumner to pick raspberries for 50 cents a day. She would stay at the facility, where they had bunks, for two weeks at a time.

“A group of us would go to a nearby drive-in to get ice cream with some of the money we made,” she said.

She graduated from Lincoln High School in 1928 with bookkeeping skills that she learned from vocational courses.

She met Hank VanderWel, a steel worker responsible for the metal in several Seattle highrises, in high school after several evenings watching him play music with his swing band, “Van’s Vampers.” They married shortly after she graduated, and bought a double lot of land in North Seattle for $100.

During their marriage, she worked as a bookkeeper for a department store and later for her son, Hank Jr’s laundry business, East Renton Laundry.

They lived on the lot in North Seattle for over 30 years, raising three children. VanderWel sold the land following her husband’s death. She sold it for $100,000.

She lived in Enumclaw, and then with her daughter before moving to Bonney Lake.

Though one birthday celebration will be held early during the summer, VanderWel won’t lose out on a party when she turns 100 come November. She will celebrate quietly with her closest family members.