Seven best friends stay in touch throughout decades

By Matthew Nash

Olympic Peninsula News Group

Besties. Gal pals. Best friends forever. There are plenty of ways to describe close friends.

But keeping those connections can be tough as life takes priority with family, work and everything in between, forcing people to lose touch or just not call as often.

One circle of friends found a way to stay together and at 85 they’re keeping tradition going.

Seven Kelso High School graduates from 1950 including Sequim’s JoAnn Fisher and Port Angeles’ Elizabeth Kelly have stuck together in some form, whether through Christmas cards, movie theater excursions, monthly luncheons or annual retreats. Now they’re planning a vacation to Ocean Shores at the end of the month to celebrate their 85th year.

Regardless of religion or political beliefs, Kelly said everyone is tolerant of one another.

“We know some people have different ideas than we do as far as politics, but that’s friendship, though,” she said.

“There are just wonderful memories that are precious to all of us.”

The group of friends, which also includes Dorothy Hanson, Milly Durand, Pat Davey and Arlis Rutherford of Longview, and Mary Anne Gennette of Kelso, have each been friends with at least one member of the group since elementary school.

Fisher and Kelly say they’ve been best friends since second grade. The group came together in junior high as their interests began crossing while growing up in Kelso during the Depression.

Gennette, a retired art/home economics teacher, said as girls, they had a lot of common interests ranging from music to art to athletics to student council to the high school newspaper.

Fisher remembers cheering at Kelso Hilanders’ games as one of the Lassies, a female cheerleader, for the football team with some of her friends.

The group says they all share good memories of sleepovers and sports games and they cherish them all, whether big or small.

Gennette recalls one of her first meetings with Kelly, a redheaded, freckled-faced girl who lived down the street from her.

“She had this huge stairwell that at the time was three times the size of me,” she said.

“Now that I go back and see it, it’s only like six or seven steps.”

After graduation, the friends were all in each others’ weddings, but there was a span of about 10 to 15 years the friends didn’t see each other every year as they do today.

A trip for the ages

Fisher and Kelly were the only friends to move away from the Kelso-Longview area to California. In the pre-internet, pre-cellphone era, the friends kept in touch mostly via letters, Fisher said.

“The whole group got involved in life, but we kept up on big events,” Kelly said.

“And it’s not that we were poor or cheap; we just didn’t make a lot of distance phone calls. It was an important thing to make long-distance phone calls back then.”

Since finding themselves all back in Washington, the seven friends have made a tradition of meeting annually at Terrace Falls Restaurant in Tumwater over the past 10 years.

“It’s kind of a halfway point,” Kelly said. “It’s a lovely restaurant.”

Their trip to Ocean Shores is the latest in a line of late-in-life excursions as a group. They traveled to China 10 years ago to celebrate turning 75, and five years ago, they took a vacation to Newport, Ore.

Hanson, who is retired from Solvay Chemicals, said the China trip came together for everyone to support Fisher following the death of her husband.

The friends have continued to support each other as much as they can through tragedies, illnesses and ailments, they said.

Fisher accompanied Kelly to a Seattle hospital for skin cancer treatment.

“I couldn’t have done it without her,” Kelly said. “She was like my right arm.”

Fisher says the same of her best friend.

“We’ve just always been there for each other,” she said, “whether difficult things or tragedies.”

Fisher said Kelly was a huge help after her husband had a series of strokes.

“It’s nice to have someone else there for you,” she said.

Laughing and loving

The friends who continued to live in the Kelso-Longview area have kept a tradition of meeting at an Izzy’s restaurant once a month for years.

But Gennette said she’s appreciated being with everyone at once, too.

“Like the saying, ‘the ties that bind,’ it’s been good,” she said.

“We’re happy. We’ve gotten to pick up on what’s going on in their lives, and each of them have been successful in their own ways.”

Before moving to Sequim, Fisher was a marriage family therapist and later a psychologist for Kaiser, while Kelly served in many jobs and continues to teach piano for children and adults.

The best friends played duets together as children, and Kelly attributes Fisher to inspiring her to play piano.

They continue to push and support one another, too, whether it’s in art or writing.

“We’re constantly reaching out and learning,” Fisher said.

If they’re not going to the movies together, then they’re discussing their book club selection or watching a DVD on a particular lecture series, the pair said.

Kelly said despite years apart, they realized their world viewpoints align quite closely.

“We’re so close, it’s more like we’re sisters,” Kelly said. “We really love each other a lot.”

“We just appreciate each other and what each other has been through,” Fisher said. “We just have a lot of memories that we cherish.”

There’s been another key ingredient to Fisher and Kelly’s friendship after 70-plus years, too.

“We laugh a lot together,” Kelly said. “When we talk on the phone, we always end up laughing.”

And while the group’s next outing is set for Ocean Shores, Kelly is already looking ahead to spend more time with her friends.

“In 2020, that’ll be our 70th [high school] reunion,” she said.

“Is that so?” Fisher asked with a smile.

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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at mnash@sequimgazette.com.