People I Admire

March 13, 2005 6:10 AM EST
The Seattle Times

SEATTLE - Call Helen Burcham Green one wired lady.

The Bothell, Wash., resident exchanges e-mail with relatives around the world. She writes books on her Mac computer and she advises people not to trust everything they find on the Internet.

'It's too easy to do the research, and you can't depend upon it,' she said. 'People want to take shortcuts today.'

Of the world's computer literati, Green could be the oldest.

She turned 103 on March 2.

She entered the computer world a decade ago after writing her first book, an extensive family genealogy that traces ancestors back to the 1400s.

Her grandson Jamie Green, a computer-science graduate, and her daughter-in-law Betty Green convinced her that editing would be simpler if she took advantage of today's technology.

So she's writing her current book - her life story - on a computer.

Green found the switch from typewriter to computer relatively easy. She keeps notes on how to do things until she masters the technique.

'I was an avid typist,' said the woman who once earned her living as a secretary back in the days of shorthand and manual typewriters. 'This is like typing.'

SeniorNet, a Bellevue, Wash., computer-learning center for people older than 50, often has people in their 70s and 80s sign up for classes, said registrar Louise Flora, but Green's age and computer knowledge make her a rarity.

'We had a woman in her 90s several years ago, but I don't know anyone 103 using a computer,' she said.

Long before the computer era arrived, Green lived through the rise of the automobile, airplanes, space exploration, radio, television, modern movies and microwaves. She remembers eating barley bread during World War I when flour was rationed, and she has ration books from World War II.

Her grandfather was a builder and came to Seattle after the 1889 fire to help rebuild the city. Drive Green to the Green Lake, Wash., area, and she'll point out houses he built and a church he helped found.

She recalled her family home at the south end of Lake Union in Washington. In the early 1900s, it was in the woods. She was number seven of 10 children, the last surviving sibling. Her father later moved the family to a farm near Yakima, but she hated the country life.

When she finished high school, she moved to San Francisco.

'My mother and brother fought it. They said that when girls went to San Francisco, they went bad,' Green said.

She went to business college and became a stenographer. When Bertha Landes, Seattle's first woman mayor, was elected in 1926, Green announced she was moving back to Seattle. She wanted to work for Landes.

Instead, she landed a job across the hall from the mayor's office.

She met her future husband at a dance and was married two years later. When the Depression hit Seattle, Green lost her job and the young couple lost their first home.

'That broke my heart,' she said. Eventually the couple, who had two sons, built another house in Lake City, Wash.

Together they traveled around the country one month each year so Green, a longtime Daughters of the American Revolution member, could do genealogy research. Her husband, Robert Green, died in 1976 before he saw his wife's book completed.

The inconveniences of aging, including hearing loss and dimming eyesight, have caught up with Green's body but not with her mind.

She lives with a son and daughter-in-law and uses an electric wheelchair because she's unsteady on her feet. She still reads, particularly Seattle history books.

Dainty, meticulous in dress and wearing pink polish on her manicured nails, she insists on helping with chores around the house. She does her laundry and gardens by tending pots on the patio. She clapped for joy when daughter-in-law Betty Green handed her a $103 gift certificate for Molbak's, a gardening center, so she can get more plants and pots.

Those pots will sit on the patio outside her office window. She'll sit at her computer, turning stacks of notes into chapters of her memoirs and watching the flowers bloom.