PENDLETON – Judd Bunnell will celebrate his 100th birthday from 1-3 p.m. today at the Pendleton Senior Center.

A Pendleton barber for more than 40 years, his first barber job was at the Patton barber shop. It was a large, four-chair, shop with the traditional mirrors and classic barber shop decor, including photos of harvest and Round-Up and brass spittoons appropriately placed.

Located where the Bank of America now stands, it was razed when PayLess, the property owner before the bank, purchased the property and built the Pendleton store.

He recalls giving haircuts to Hoot Gibson, Slim Pickens, Yakima Canutt and Gordon Smith.

He retired from the barbershop when he and Paul Richards were partners. Richards now owns and operates “Heads Up” men’s hair salon.

Bunnell was born Nov. 18, 1902, at The Dalles. He attended Centerville schools in Klickitat County, Wash., near Goldendale. He came to Pendleton with his parents and worked for about a year at the flour mill. He met Mary Thorne there, and they married in 1935. The couple’s only child, Marcia, was born in 1945.

He attended college at Ellensburg, Wash., for a year, but found it was too expensive for Depression years, so he and a friend decided instead to attend a barber college in Spokane.

He had cut his friends’ hair in Centerville, and “was pretty good at it,” he said, so barber college seemed a logical step.

Bunnell loved to ice skate and can remember skating to work when it was cold enough to freeze a good covering of ice on the streets.

Marcia recalls trips to the Lloyd Center in Portland with her parents. She and her mother would shop while her dad ice skated. They would meet for lunch and then continue shopping and skating. She also recalls ice skating with her father at a small pond near Rieth.

His favorite place to ice skate was “wherever the ice was best,” he said.

The family lived in a house “big enough for 10 kids” on Third Street that had belonged to Mary Thorne’s family until the mid 1950s, Marcia said. They sold it and moved to a smaller house that was easier to take care of.

During his barber shop years, Bunnell became a member of the “Liars Club” in Pendleton. Several local businessmen met at The Oregon Cafe on Main St. where the new Mexican restaurant is currently located.

“We had breakfast and told stories,” Bunnell said.

A photo of him in a striped prison suit handcuffed to a light post on Main Street reminded him of his initiation into the Elks club. He and his wife were longtime members and frequently went dancing together during their 58-year marriage. He learned to dance from a teacher at school and only two months ago gave up the pastime because he has become a bit unsteady on his feet and was concerned he might fall and injure his dance partner.

Some of his early memories include seeing freight hauled in wagons pulled by horses over the frozen Columbia River when he was a boy living in The Dalles. Valentino haircuts were popular when he was in high school. Pictures of his high school basketball team reminded him that he was a team member.

When you’ve lived 100 years, you’ve had time to do lots of things. In addition to hunting, fishing on the Oregon coast and Canadian lakes, he and his wife traveled in their Airstream trailer to Yuma and Mesa, Arizona, several winters and spent time in Guaymas, Mexico, one year.

He has a lifetime pass to the Pendleton Round-Up because he volunteered as a member of the “stretcher crew,” carrying injured riders out of the arena to the first aid room or ambulance for 25 years.

For something different, Mary and Judd Bunnell went to Detroit with friends Mary and Pink Rupe to buy new cars in the mid 1940s.

“I bought a brand new Oldsmobile and drove it right out of the factory,” he said.

Other longtime friends of the Bunnells were Mamie, Annie and Tony Vey.

It becomes lonesome when you outlive your parents, siblings, most of your cousins and most of your friends and business associates, Marcia said.

Bunnell began oil painting when he was in his 70s. His landscape of Celilo Falls hangs in the dining room at home.

As for things he didn’t do, he never learned to swim very well because growing up with the Celilo Indians, his father wouldn’t allow Judd being thrown in the river to “learn to swim,” as was customary with their children. He also never served in the armed services because “he was too young for World War I and too old for World War II.”

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Call Sandy Holtz, community editor, at 1-800-522-0255.