By most accounts, Don Anderson has lived an exceptional life. He’s been a tailgunner aboard a B-17 bomber during an attack on Berlin during World War II, ran his own radio station in Redmond and served as a local fire district’s first public education officer.

Now add centenarian to the list of the former Tualatin, Sherwood and King City resident who turned 100 in March, and you have the recipe for a life well lived. 

So what does the longtime area resident attribute his longevity to?

“I don’t smoke and I don’t drink. I had a terrible time quitting smoking but laying off of alcohol has not bothered me at all,” an animated Anderson said during a recent interview at his current home, Tigard’s Woodland Heights Assisted Living. “I keep some Chardonnay on my kitchen cabinet in case I have trouble sleeping, but I don’t drink it unless it’s necessary.”

From farming to military service

Having grown up in Arlington, Washington, Anderson was an 18-year-old working milking cows and stacking hay when he received his military induction notice in 1943. He soon found himself at the Branch Agricultural College (now Southern Utah University) in Cedar City, Utah, training as an aviation pilot where he harbored hopes of becoming a bombardier or perhaps a co-pilot, Anderson explained in a previous interview.

However, one Saturday he was informed otherwise.

“They gathered a bunch of us together and said, ‘we have way too many people in this program, so you’re going to be gunners instead of (pilots).’ One guy cried. It meant so much to him,” Anderson recalled.

Before long, he found himself as a tailgunner headed for his first mission with the 401st Bombardment Group, part of the 94th Combat Bomb Wing in the First Air Division of the Eighth Air Force. 

Eventually he would end up at Deenethorpe Airfield in England, aboard a B-17 bomber dubbed “The Joker,” an aircraft that would soon join 1,000 other Flying Fortresses heading for a sortie to carry out what was then one of the largest bombing raids on Berlin, Germany. 

A close call

“Unfortunately for me, the goal (of the enemy) was to kill the tail-gunner first … then the (German) fighters could fly in behind the bomber and shoot it down,” Anderson said in a 2015 interview.

In that interview, Anderson explained that their mission orders called for the B-17s to drop their payloads, bank to the right and return home. The only problem was that a massive amount of German flak continued to explode to the right of them the whole time they were there.

“I knew as a certainty that I was going to be killed in the next few moments but strangely, I felt no fear,” Anderson wrote in his self-published 2014 autobiography, “Donald.” “Later, I read of others who had a similar experience. Apparently, we reach a point of resignation and simply wait for it to happen. Amazingly, the moment our bombs dropped, the flak stopped and we banked as planned and returned home.”

While the tradition was to drink a shot of whiskey after a mission was over, Anderson said he could have used two shots that day.

Still, he said, his military experience proved a godsend because as a skinny farm kid, he had no self confidence and his new position soon proved that, “Hey, maybe you’re not a wash out after all.” 

Declining to re-enlist, Anderson returned to Oregon and married his first of four wives.

Redmond radio and fire department years

Soon he would end up running a Redmond radio station where he joined a volunteer fire department that also manned an ambulance. At one point, he taught a childbirth class, something that was absent at that time from the American Red Cross first aid book, he recalled. Eventually he would become president of the Volunteer Ambulance Association of Oregon.  

In 1970, Anderson packed up his family and moved to Tualatin, becoming an alarm operator for what was then the Tualatin Rural Fire Protection District (the fire district that was eventually absorbed into Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue). There he would become the district’s public education officer, the first of its kind in the state, he recalled. 

While the initial education for school-age children regarding fire departments consisted of letting them try on firemen’s turnouts, Anderson started teaching students the nuances of smoke detectors including how to take them apart, fix them and put them back together. 

Never afraid of public speaking, Anderson got the word out about the importance of smoke detectors both through school assemblies and the media.

“I was pretty sassy. I wrote a lot of newspaper articles, and one of them I remember I talked about smoke detectors in your house. ‘If you don’t know how to (fix one), just ask any sixth grader in the Tualatin Fire District,” Anderson recalled writing. 

Fire Prevention Singers

While he traveled to various schools around the area, one of his focuses was Tualatin Elementary School, where he gathered a talented group of 20 hand-picked youths who would become the Fire Prevention Singers. The singers would travel around to area schools, singing about the importance of fire safety. 

“We did it for every school, every elementary school in the Tualatin Fire District,” Anderson recalled. 

Aiding him were two Tualatin Elementary School teachers, Joy Lindner and later, Linda Laine, both accomplished piano players. 

While the operation started out what he called “Mickey Mouse,” it grew into something much larger, having transformed itself into a one-hour production complete with props. One year, Anderson created his “Fireman Don’s El Cheapo Magic Act,” to keep kids entertained during the performance.

Now, Anderson would like to reunite those Fire Prevention Singers who went through the program by giving him a jingle at 503-430-1829.

“I think that would be fun,” Anderson said. “I would love that.”

A proficient piano player himself — he wrote some of the songs for the Fire Prevention Singers — Anderson still tickles the ivories nightly at his retirement facility, saying it seems to go over well with residents and staff. 

“They haven’t asked me to stop,” he said.