The cottage still stands where Earle Darst was born in 1919.
It’s across the street and down the road from a weathered, century-old building with crumbling wood siding that once housed the general store and post office where his parents met.
Like much of Coupeville, sentimental places are preserved in San de Fuca, especially those near and dear to Darst, who still calls the waterfront community home.
“I’m only a quarter-mile from where I was born,” said Darst, who turns 96 in April.
“People say, ‘You didn’t get very far, did you?’
“I tell them, I was gone 32 years and came back on purpose. This is the best place in the world to live. There’s no other place like it.”
DARST CAN look south through any window of his beachfront home and enjoy a view of Penn Cove and the beaches where Whidbey Island’s earliest inhabitants lived for centuries.
More intimately, it’s a vantage point shared for generations through a family tree that includes sea captains and farmers. One of the most well known of the sea captains, Edward Barrington, not only was one of Oak Harbor’s prominent early pioneers but was also Darst’s great grandfather.
Still, the fields — and not the sea — are what are calling Earle Darst these days.
He spent a lifetime raising bulbs and flowers on farmland on Whidbey Island and in the Skagit Valley.
And that’s what makes sitting in his kitchen, sipping coffee and staring at the bright sunshine outside so frustrating in recent weeks.
FOR THE first time in 80 years of farming, Darst’s mobility is compromised, preventing him from climbing onto his tractor or driving his van to make flower deliveries.
All this started in October, when he broke his hip during a fall. Weeks later, he was determined to get moving, fell again and broke the other hip.
He’s trying to not let this break his resolve.
“In my mind, I’m getting my legs working again,” said Darst, who has relied on a walker to get around since the second broken hip.
It’s a familiar itch that comes as spring approaches, passed down by father Glenn Darst, who became wealthy bulb farming fields of irises in Coupeville and Mount Vernon. Bulb farming soon became a joint venture of father and sons Earle and Gerald Darst with the Darst Bulb Farms operation reaching its peak in the late 1960s, covering 137 acres and producing millions of iris bulbs, with many shipped to the Netherlands.
(Below: Even as a young boy growing up in the small Central Whidbey community of San de Fuca, Earle Darst is seen with flowers in his hand and his mother, Madeline Fisher Darst, at his side.)
WHILE HIS brother became known for potatoes, Earle stayed true to bulbs and flowers, ultimately shifting to a cut flower operation that continues on a much smaller scale to this day on West Beach Road with the focus on daffodils and irises and occasional sunflowers.
Until he got hurt, he was still behind the wheel of a vehicle, making store-to-store, off-island deliveries with a helper, traveling the Interstate-5 corridor from Seattle to Bellingham.
“I have the attitude that I can get well and be out there and do more farming and have the pickers pick flowers,” he said.
Darst has always had a “can-do” attitude, according to his niece, Peggy Darst Townsdin.
She credits his longevity to his strong will, not smoking, dining on wild salmon each Friday and an active lifestyle that has included seemingly endless nights of dancing.
AS RECENTLY as last fall, Darst would stop by the Tyee restaurant in Coupeville to sing karaoke.
“I could dance all night,” said Darst, a former rower at the University of Washington and later Oregon State University, where he earned a degree in entomology. “I would dance as long as the orchestra would play.”
He would like to dance over to the fields at the site of the old family farm off West Beach Road, where daffodils are coming into bloom.
He’s trying to stay patient and is hoping to get over there to supervise and also to check on orders.
“I don’t feel like I’m 95,” Darst said. “I feel about 80.”
WHEN DARST fell in October, it was at his great niece’s wedding in Bellingham.
Even though he knew he was seriously hurt, and thought his leg was broken, he told everyone not to call for an ambulance until after the bride and groom exchanged their vows.
They listened. And he sat in a chair from a distance, then was taken away by ambulance.
“He stays as cool as a cucumber,” Darst Townsdin said.
“He always does. He always stays calm and logical.”
A WORLD WAR II veteran, a poet and the last living charter member of the Island County Historical Society, which dates back to 1949, Darst has witnessed nearly a century’s worth of change and growth.
He’s been around almost as long as Oak Harbor has been incorporated. The city is celebrating its 100th anniversary of incorporation this year.
“I’ve seen it grow up from almost nothing,” said Darst, who for years has walked during the city’s parade on St. Patrick’s Day. “I remember when it was a little town like Coupeville and then it grew up after the Navy came.”
Darst started helping his father on the bulb farm when he was 15 or 16 and other than a four-year stint in the Army has never stopped.
His interest was passed down to his daughter, Vivian Darst, owner of The Flower Lady florist shop in downtown Seattle.
FOR THE past 15 years, Earle Darst has been back in San de Fuca, where so many of his childhood memories were formed.
Formerly a bustling town called Coveland, San de Fuca was once a popular landing place for tourists who came aboard steamboats from Seattle and other Puget Sound locations.
It remains deeply sentimental for Darst, who attended the old schoolhouse that still rests on a hill.
It’s a place where he can reflect on a colorful life that has rarely stood still for very long.
And the beat goes on.
Steve Eelkema, owner of the nearby Penn Cove Pottery, said he’s noticed on several occasions that Darst will arrive home after a long day of deliving flowers and remain parked in his driveway for a long period, the sound of music emitting from his vehicle.
“He’ll just sit there and listen to classical music,” Eelkema said.
