Lyle Nicholson celebrates 100 years

Nicholson spent summers on his grandfather’s Parkdale farm, playing in the irrigation ditch, picking berries, and helping his grandfather add on to the house (which still stands today). Lyle said they just wore “farmer johns,” no shoes, and without electricity they got up at sunrise and went to bed at sunset. He says these were some of his best days.

He graduated from high school in Seattle and from Washington State College in Pullman, where he received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree in 1937. He married Dorothy Robinson in 1940. During the war, Lyle did poultry and meat inspections, and then ran large animal (farm animals) practice.

In the early 1960s, Lyle purchased 50 acres of timberland in the Upper Hood River Valley, where he built a small cabin for him and his family and continues enjoying it to this day. Dorothy was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1995 and passed in 2001.

He has three children: Craig (Mount Hood), Bruce (Portland), and Jan (Twin Falls, Idaho).