It’s never too early to show some pride in your hometown.

The Sequim Irrigation Festival and Sequim Pioneer Association recently announced next year’s Grand Pioneers William Blank and Mayme Faulk and Honorary Pioneers Milton Lynch and Jo Robb.

They’ll help represent Sequim at the 121st festival running May 6-15, 2016, with the tagline “Looking to the Future through the Past.”

Blank and Faulk were born and raised in Sequim while Lynch and Robb have lived in the Sequim area more than 40 years each as required by the Pioneer Association to be considered for the honors.

William Blank

Blank, 81, a third-generation Sequim native, said he’s “been quite a few places but I couldn’t find a better place” than Sequim.

He first lived halfway between where Sequim Bay State Park and John Wayne Marina are now before his parents, Ralph and Pearl, moved to Blyn.

Blank worked for the Milwaukee Railroad before it went “belly up,” he said, so he went on to work for Seattle Northcoast and eventually helped his brother build houses and Chet Miller build docks on Sequim Bay.

He and his wife Rena lived and worked in the Port Angeles area for 36 years before returning to where he used to live. They have three children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Blank said he used to build model boats and regular-sized boats, he played tennis and does a lot of crosswords and word searches.

Mayme Faulk

Faulk, 85, a fourth-generation Sequim native, said her family living in Sequim dates back to her great-grandparents. She has the declaration to be a second-generation Grand Pioneer during the festival following her mother Dorothy (Messenger) Hendrickson, who held the title in 1986.

Faulk lived in the Zaccardo House in Blyn from age 6-20 and again from 1955-2005 and raised seven children there.

Faulk now has nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

For work, Faulk spent almost 20 years at Southwoods as a clerk and later its bookkeeper before the store closed. She went on to work in accounting for 10 years and worked another five years only during tax season.

Faulk said she has a lot of family here and after some travels preferred it in Sequim most.

In her time now, she enjoys sewing, knitting, reading, gardening and spending time outside.

Milton Lynch

Lynch, 81, recalls moving to Sequim in 1943 during World War II. He went to first grade in Sequim and spent three more years at Fairview Elementary School before coming back to Sequim in the fifth grade.

He built a career around the grocery and retail industry at Tradewell and spent 10 years working at Swain’s General Store in Port Angeles.

Lynch has been married for 62 years to his wife Mary and they had five children with three still alive. They also have 16 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

In 1996, he and Mary began traveling four months out of the year to Courtside, Ariz., as snowbirds and he worked part-time in retail until they stopped traveling in 2006.

As for Sequim’s appeal, Lynch said he “likes the water, mountains, weather and the beauty that’s here. Arizona had its own beauty but not like here.”

For fun, Lynch used to hunt but “I got one deer in 23 years of hunting so I started fishing.” They also did a lot of camping.

Jo Robb

Robb, 85, was born in Port Townsend on  July 5 after a Fourth of July trip to see her grandparents in Port Hadlock. Her family moved to Port Angeles immediately afterward because her dad, Robert Iversen, was in the U.S. Coast Guard.

She moved to Sequim in 1947 and graduated with Faulk from Sequim High School in 1948.

She was married to Ivan Robb and they had three children who went on to have five grandchildren,” Robb said. Ivan, was born and raised on the property where Sequim Walmart is now,” Robb said. He died at age 44.

She’s been with her companion Royal Seal for three years.

Robb served as a medical receptionist for Dr. Keith Senz for 18 years until she retired but wishes she never had left. “If I was 40 years younger, I’d still be working,” she said. “I liked being around people.”

After years of living in Sequim she still finds it to be “a great place to live.”

“I tried moving away a few times and came right back,” she said.

She’s also an adventurer of sorts enjoying sailing, being on the water and in the air.

“They haven’t made an airplane I haven’t wanted to fly in,” she said. “My bucket list is pretty empty.”

And more …

The 121st Sequim Irrigation Festival highlights Sequim’s transition from the past to the present and into the future with black and white imagery and selective colorization as well as steam-punk style visuals to illustrate the shift from past to future.

For more information, visit www.irrigationfestival.com.