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Spiritwood resident Margie Vines favorite song is “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain”, in which Katie Smith sings, “When the moon comes over the mountain, every beam brings a dream, dear, of you.” It is a song of fond memories and we were lucky enough to have Margie sit down and share some of her favorite memories with us.

Growing up in South Dakota, Margie Vines watched Mt. Rushmore being carved out. One day she and her sister were sitting on a knoll about 15 feet away from the road, when they saw a big touring car come around the bend. It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt coming to review the completed project. President Roosevelt saw the girls and tipped his hat to them. President Roosevelt remains her all-time favorite president. She says when she heard him speak on the radio she was “in complete awe. He was a very important man and everyone respected him.”

Margie learned to drive at the age of 11. She remembers driving her dad’s 1933 Terraplane from Nebraska to Idaho with her mom, sister and cousin as passengers and her father following her in the Road Grader pulling their trailer house. She says her dad told her not to exceed 35 mph, but she had to stop often for her dad to catch up to them.

In 1941, Margie moved with her family to Seattle and joined the Navy a few years later as a Corps Wave. She was the first to administer Penicillin shots. Penicillin became commercially available in 1945, saving thousands of lives.

As a young widow in the 1960s, Margie, along with 75 other people, traveled around Europe on a Velo Solex bike for three weeks. She built a house on Center Island, Washington in the late 1980s because “she wanted to build a house.” Margie passes this nugget of gold onto the younger generation: “If you really want to do something, then do it.”