Harriett Beckett came to Pullman with her husband 66 years ago to teach and became a strong proponent of literature in her adopted city.
At 100, her eyes aren't what they used to be, so now she spends time fondly looking out at the rolling hills of the Palouse from behind her window.
"You get the slopes," she said. "It's so gorgeous, especially in the spring, with the different shades of green."
Beckett was born in 1913 at her grandmother's Illinois home. Her parents had a room there, but that night decided to sleep in a tent in the yard.
"I was one of the last kids born on my grandmother's kitchen table," she said. "It was obviously September and very hot."
A 1935 graduate of the University of Illinois, Beckett managed to get her first job in Roseville, Ill., teaching math and English at the height of the Great Depression.
It was there she met Paul Beckett.
"We were married in a very short amount of time," Beckett said of their three-week courtship. "We felt we were pretty unusual. ... And it lasted over 60 years. It worked."
With her husband needing to keep ahead of the Depression, finding work meant moving around a lot. During World War II, Paul Beckett was offered a government desk job in Washington, D.C.
"I had two children at that time, but we were in California at the time, and they were writing him letters, saying if we didn't come immediately, we would lose the war," Beckett said, adding of her husband's job, "Of course, it was pretty minor."
Prior to moving to Pullman in 1947, where she and her husband taught at Washington State University, they spent two years at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon - a high point for her family, she said.
"He was teaching, and I was teaching there, as well," Beckett said. "Our kids were 9 and 11 and quite right with their mental abilities to absorb all the sights and understand the lectures.
"It's still a pretty stormy place," she said of Lebanon. "It's small. It has a hard time defending itself, I think, but it's a very complicated issue, too."
Paul Beckett chaired the WSU Political Science Department for several years. The couple had started out as Republicans, but ended up Democrats.
"I was the last one who voted for (Thomas) Dewey," she said, adding the election of President Barack Obama was a historical milestone Paul would have enjoyed. "I thought the Obama campaign was highly exciting. Of course, my husband died in 1995, so he missed that excitement."
With 100 years to look back on, Beckett said she was most thankful for the household comforts that came about, such as the dishwasher and laundry washing machine.
"It certainly gave women quite a bit of freedom," she said.
As for computers, Beckett said she tried them out but doesn't care for them.
"It's already out of my realm," she said. "Things started going Internet, and I dropped out then, which was way back during computers."
That's the way things are going, Beckett conceded, but she said she has always favored a good book.
She was instrumental in managing the fundraising effort that helped build the Neill Public Library and was president of the library's friends organization. Beckett had also been a member of Pullman's Fortnightly Club, a literary group.
"I've always read a lot, but my eyes are beginning to fail," she said, so she left the group after a number of years. "I didn't want to be one of those women who fell asleep."
Brandon Macz can be reached at (208) 883-4631, or by email to bmacz@dnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrandonMacz.
