Beatrice Baldridge just recently turned 100 years old.

She also celebrated her 25th birthday.

Baldridge, who lives in Maple Valley, was born on Leap Day, Feb. 29. Having a birthday that comes around only once every four years, she said, was something that bothered her as a child.

“I felt very slighted that I didn’t have a birthday like everyone else,” she said. “And then I grew up and realized it was special.”

In many ways, Baldridge has the ability to say things that are also special in that few others can say. A child during the Roaring Twenties, she graduated from high school during the bottom of the Great Depression, yet was still able to attend a local business college. National historic events, such as the Dust Bowl, are also part of her personal history.

Baldridge was born Beatrice Troutman in Carthage, Mo. in 1912. The Titanic was months away from her maiden voyage. World War I was two years away. The first sports radio broadcast wouldn’t take place for another eight years, and the first “talkie” film wouldn’t be released for another 15 years. Henry Ford’s Model T was only four years old. Baseball would remain in the Dead Ball Era for another five years. Americans didn’t have to pay an income tax, and there was no Federal minimum wage.

Baldridge’s father worked in a hardware store before he moved out onto a farm in Jasper County when she was four years old. There was no electricity on the farm, and the only heat came from their wood stove, which Baldridge had to restock herself.  Her mother, a homemaker, instilled in her a sense of self-sufficiency by teaching her how to make most of the things they needed in the home from clothes to toy dolls.

Although she didn’t realize it at the time, many of the skills she learned from her mother would aid her later during the austere 1930s and 1940s.

While Baldridge didn’t have to walk to school uphill both ways, she did have to walk two miles to a one-room schoolhouse, where a teacher scarcely out of high school taught 20 students from every grade. The amenities, if any, were primitive. If they were thirsty, there was a bucket of water and a dipper in the middle of the room. Some textbooks were finished, but others had to be bought. Instead of a state-wide standardized test, Baldridge had to drive into town to the county courthouse in Carthage in order to take an examination to complete the eighth grade.

To attend high school, Baldridge and her brother, Leeroy, had to drive into town in his Ford Touring car, which had the luxury of side curtains to protect them from the rain.

When Baldridge graduated in 1931, the country’s unemployment rate was 15.9 percent. Yet, despite this, she was offered the chance to attend a business college in town for three months. While she was at the school, she and two other girls were brought to the Red Cross headquarters for Federal Relief. At the time, Missouri was also feeling the effects of the Great Drought, and by 1932 charities were feeding 10 percent of the population.

Baldridge talked about it, however, in a matter-of-fact fashion, even when she discussed how her father’s crops were almost entirely wiped out, which led to the bank taking over their mortgage. While she lived with her grandmother in town, her father had enough machinery and livestock to move to a smaller piece of land.

Underneath her matter-of-fact tone, however, are subtly indications of how great the financial strains were people, particularly when she spoke of how she met her future husband in early 1934. For entertainment, she and her cousin went to the local skating rink to watch particularly skilled skaters, because it didn’t cost them anything. While they were there, two young men were sitting in front of them. Eventually, they mustered the courage to come over to the two girls and talk to them.

One of them, Kenna Baldridge, had been raised by his grandparents and worked as a telegraph operator for Sinclair Oil. After driving both of them home, he asked if he could see Baldridge again. Impressed by his mannerly demeanor and well-behaved appearance, she agreed. Later that week, they went to a local carnival, where they simply walked around and talked, but were unable to afford anything.

The only time Baldridge openly spoke of their frugality was when she recalled how she and Kenna Baldridge once bought an ice cream cone and a cup of coffee at the Hollywood Cafe, which cost a nickel.

“That was a big deal,” she said.

When they finally married on July 11, 1935, Baldridge states that they didn’t really have a “wedding,” unless getting married in their pastor’s home with only their immediate family accompanying them counts.

“It was just the times,” she said. “So that’s what we did.”

Living in Paul’s Valley, Okla., they welcomed their first son, Florin, who was born in 1936. Kenna Baldridge continued working for Sinclair Oil, eventually gaining a management position. Eventually, he went to work for Remington Arms making bullets at the beginning of World War II.

It was then, in 1942, that Kenna Baldridge was offered a job working for Hanford Engineering in an obscure town in Washington called Richland. The Hanford Site, as it came to be known, was a part of the ultra-secret Manhattan Project, which produced the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.

While she knew it was part of some government project, Beatrice Baldridge said she had no idea what her husband was doing there, as the whole matter was secretive. She half-joked that “You paid with your life if you said what you knew.”

Kenna Baldridge accepted the position ostensibly because there was housing available for the family and the rent was fairly inexpensive. When he arrived in Richland by himself, however, he discovered that the only housing available was a barracks for the workers. Forced to remain in Missouri, Beatrice Baldridge, who had just given birth to their second son, Perry, was finally able to move up to Richland in November 1943, where they moved into a prefabricated home. Though it was meant to be temporary housing for the project, she and Kenna Baldridge would live in that home for the next 52 years.

When they first arrived, Richland was nothing more than a tiny village of 300 dotted with small farm houses. As more people involved in the Hanford Site entered the area, the town swelled in separate sections. There was an old part of town, while the prefabricated homes were located in a cluster that resembled a quasi-master planned development. The government eventually built other buildings, such as the schoolhouse where church was held on Sundays. The town would reach 25,000 by the end of the war.

In some ways, life was very much like the rest of the country. Food there was rationed, and everyone, including her two sons, were issued ration cards. When she went to get groceries at the Safeway, her son Perry would bring along his wheelbarrow full of bacon grease that they would turn in as part of the war effort.

Nevertheless, war-time Richland was its own distinct world. All the homes were owned by the government, and Hanford Engineering Works had its name and a specific serial number on all the furniture in the homes. Various problems that occurred in other cities, such as crime, vagrancy, and unemployment, were nonexistent. There were no slums, ghettos, or bad parts of town. Government agents in gray cars patrolled the streets and disciplined unruly children. Bus service was free and would arrive right outside their doorstep. Everyone who lived in Richland worked at the Hanford site, which meant no vagrants.

Because of this, she says she never feared for her sons safety, aside from the large irrigation ditch that ran past the back of their house.

Ironically, having survived the dust bowl in Missouri and Oklahoma, Beatrice Baldridge said they also experienced dust storms due to the construction at the Hanford site, in addition to the scorching heat.

“We hated the dust storms because it meant cleaning just everything,” she said.

Perry Baldridge said the heat was something to be reckoned with, as well.

“The joke was you could cook eggs on the street,” he said. “I’m here to tell you they could.”

During the war, the phrase “loose lips sink ships” was used to encourage people to remain quiet about military activities. But the Hanford site gave it a whole new meaning.

Every morning, Kenna Baldridge drove five miles to the Hanford 300 Area, where he helped maintain the site’s safety by detecting radiation and contamination from employees. Each of them were given a pen-like device and a badge. The pen was a metal cylinder with a clip that was able to read radiation levels. The photo ID badge contained a shoot of film that could also show radiation. At the end of every shift, each worker was required to turn in their pen and badge, which Kenna Baldridge then inspected. Due to the immense size of the Hanford site, he had to drive to the various gatehouses, which involved driving 75 miles a day.

When he returned home at the end of his shift, he could not elaborate in any way what he had done or how the day had gone, which she said didn’t bother her too much.

“We were just earnest not to repeat anything we knew,” she said.

It was there that Beatrice Baldridge was also able to put many of the skills she had learned on the farm to good use, such as making clothes for herself and her children. Some of the clothes are still in her closet, which she wears to this day.

“You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl,” she said. “It was a good life there.”

Years later, when she finally learned what the site’s true purpose was, she says she was “dumbfounded.”

After the war, they were able to buy their home from the government in 1954, where they lived until 1997, when Kenna Baldridge passed away. Beatrice Baldridge moved up to Issaquah until April 2011 when she moved down to Maple Valley.

As to why she has lived so long, Beatrice Baldridge said she doesn’t mull over it too much.

“I have a very deep faith, and I think God has had a purpose for me to fulfill,” she said. “When he’s ready for me he’s ready for me.”