Sequim’s Beverly Cays Hendrickson, 84, is one of this year’s grand pioneers for the 122nd Sequim Irrigation Festival, the longest running festival in Washington.
She and other dignitaries will participate in events leading up to and during the festival May 5-14.
Cays Hendrickson said she finds the festival “just as important now as it was then because it’s about family (and) it brings families together.”
She’s part of a big family, too.
Her parents Orrin Cays and Ollie Ballard Cays had six children and Cays Hendrickson was born in Carlsborg in 1932. The Cays family moved to Sequim by Bell Hill a year later to the old creamery building across from the railroad depot.
She fondly remembers walking to school because the buses didn’t come their way back then and seeing soldiers camping in the oak tree area along Sequim Avenue during World War II.
“My dad stopped in the camp and invited lots of soldiers over for Christmas who didn’t have any place to go,” she said.
Her family has long ties to the festival. She was a festival princess in 1948 and both her sister Caroline Cays Baumunk and her mother were Grand Pioneers in 2012 and 1990.
She says she’s always enjoyed the festival and she’s gone to all but two grand parades because she had heart surgery one year and she was away for another.
Cays Hendrickson married Orville Hendrickson in 1950 and they had three children. She now has six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Each year, she makes a tradition of setting out chairs for her family and friends early in the morning of the parade on the north side of Washington Street by Third Avenue where the former Fred Bauer car lot once operated.
She always wanted to participate in the festival’s Maypole dance but the first year she was old enough they stopped it.
Cays Hendrickson worked some as a waitress but mostly focused on being a mom and grandma. She is a charter member of Sequim Bible Church and she learned to fly an airplane. Cays Hendrickson continues to enjoy sewing and crafting.
For more information on Irrigation Festival events, visit www.irrigationfestival.com.