LOPEZ LEGEND, WIFE ARE GRAND MARSHALS
by John Goekler
“The Islands’ Sounder” Wednesday, July 1, 1992
‘You got to have fun as long as you can.” That’s how "Uncle" Phil Hastin views life, and for fun this weekend, he and his wife Betty will serve as Grand Marshals for the 4th of July parade on Lopez. It’s an appropriate honor for the Only native-born Lopez couple to celebrate more than 50 years of marriage.
Phil’s grandfather moved to the island in 1885 and homesteaded 160 acres on Lopez Hill. Betty’s granddad, who changed his name from Jorgensen to Norman, followed a few years later, after the Seattle fire.
Growing up on Lopez was great fun, but a lot like work, Phil says. He milked the cows in the morning, then drove them up the road to pasture before running back to catch the Model T school bus. There was always plenty of work at harvest time too. When he was 13, Phil discovered baseball. He was 4 feet 8 inches tall, but “fast as the dickens.” He got walked a lot, he says, because he was too short for the pitchers to find the strike zone. Once on base his speed allowed him to steal on a regular basis. He. liked the game so much that he played and coached for 51 years.
The 4th of July has always been lucky for Phil. In 1933 he put on his new pair of tennis shoes, “Cost me $1.75 or something,” he laughs, and entered the holiday race in Friday Harbor. He beat the local hero, a track star at Bellingham Normal College, and collected the $5 prize. Two years later he won both the dash and the mile races at the Lopez 4th of July run, collecting $10 in the process. “That was a month’s wage,” says Betty.
After finishing high school in Friday Harbor (Lopez then wasn’t accredited), Phil took on many local jobs. "I was the highest paid farm hand on Lopez,” he says, “$20 a month for milking and 27 cents an hour for driving a truck in the pea harvest.”
Later, he went to work for Betty’s dad, who was skipper of the fish tender, Fenwick. Asked if that’s where he met Betty, Phil just laughs. "I met her when she was born,” he says. "I was just a kid and I had my eye on her. She had hers on me, too.”
Phil fished Alaska in his early twenties, and made skipper at 24. In the winter he worked as a shipwright, building trollers in the yard at MacKaye Harbor. When the war came, he was assigned to a shipyard in Seattle and spent five years building. minesweepers, tugs and patrol boats. ‘That’s wooden, too,” he says. “None of that plastic stuff."
He worked with so many Scandinavians that he says, “I spelled my name three or four different ways. Hanstin, Hasten, Hanston, depending on whether the crew was Swedes, Danes or Norwegians.”
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"I was just a kid and I had my eye on her.”
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After the war Phil and Betty came back to Lopez where he helped build Camp Nor’wester. He dug the lake, built the dam, put in the water system and used teams for logging. He also worked on the ferries briefly as a seaman, and learned to witch wells.
Then he and Betty started to farm. They ran dairy cattle, selling the cream in Friday Harbor. Sometimes the creamery ran short ot money, and they got paid with chickens, vegetables and ice cream. ‘You haven’t had ice cream ‘til you ate ours,” Betty says.
When the dairy went broke, they moved into the beef business, raising steers and selling them on the mainland. They’re still at it today. “Hell, I’m the last complete farmer in San Juan County,” Uncle Phil says. ‘We got pigs, sheep, cattle, chickens and,” he adds with a cackling laugh, “one duck.”
LOPEZ LEGEND PHIL HASTINS and his wife Betty will serve as grand marshals for Lopez’s July 4 parade.
Phil and Betty have always had a strong sense of community. He’s served on the school board, the Agriculture Stabilization Board and the Soil Conservation Board. He’s still a member of the Grange and the Historical Society and is serving his 27th year on the Parks Board.
Phil's personal philosophy is simple. “No matter how mad they are at you, treat ‘em with kindness.” Maybe that’s why he can say, "I got nieces and nephews all over the world. I get letters from England, Germany, all over the place, just addressed to “Uncle Phil, Lopez, WA.”