Dick Higgins, Central Oregon’s oldest living Pearl Harbor survivor, turns 102 years old on Monday, and the community is invited to participate in a parade in his honor Sunday in Bend.

The last time there was a birthday parade for Higgins was on his 100th birthday, when at least 200 vehicles participated, said Larry Moyer, one of the parade organizers and the president of the High Desert Eagles chapter of the Oregon Veterans Motorcycle Association.

“We encourage anybody to come in any vehicle of any kind,” Moyer said of Sunday’s parade which will begin at High Desert Middle School at 61111 SE 27th St. in Bend. Participants are asked to arrive at 3:45 p.m. to prepare before setting off at 4 p.m.

Higgins, an Oklahoma native, had enlisted in the Navy and was a 20-year-old radio operator of a U.S. Navy PBY Catalina flying boat. His crew was stationed at the Navy airfield on Ford Island on Oahu when the Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Higgins served in the Pacific in the first years after Pearl Harbor, his PBY island hopping with advancing U.S. troops.

“Sand bars and bug flats,” Higgins recalled in a 2021 interview with The Bulletin.

Late in the war, Higgins was sent stateside to train aircrews. In Florida, he met a young woman named Winnie. They married in 1944 and were together until her death in 2004.

After World War II ended in 1945, Higgins made a career of the Navy, retiring as a chief petty officer in 1959. His experiences are part of the official U.S. Library of Congress collection.

After retiring from the Navy, Higgins lived in Costa Mesa in Orange County, at one time running a Winchell’s Donut Shop. He was the last leader of the Orange County chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association when the national group disbanded ion 2011 – the 70th anniversary of the attack.

Higgins moved to Bend in 2014 to be near his family. He survived a bout of COVID-19 in 2020 and made the trip to Pearl Harbor in December 2021 for the 80th anniversary of the attack.

Moyer said the parade will begin at the middle school and move north on SE 27th Street before turning left on Ferguson Road. On Mount Vista Drive, the parade will turn right, passing Higgins’ house on the left. The parade will then turn left on Victory Loop which circles around the neighborhood and back to Higgins’ house.

Higgins will be sitting outside his home in the shade to greet the parade, Moyer said.

Angela Norton, Higgins’ granddaughter, said she isn’t involved in the parade but is moved that the community continues to honor her grandfather.

“He looks better than ever,” she said.

“It’s so sweet. His dermatologist just said to him the other day: ‘You are looking even younger.’ So, whatever he is doing he is doing it well.” “He’ll always attribute it to that good old Dust Bowl dust, growing up in the Depression. He said that is what made him live long.”

Norton said she and her family are blessed that Higgins is still around and telling stories.

In fact, on Thursday, Higgins told one of his favorite memories from his childhood on his Instagram feed about when his father would splurge and buy him root beer floats whenever he’d sell a bale of cotton in town.

“You don’t know if there is going to be 103 next year, so realizing every moment is precious with him and trying to instill that especially with our kids. So the great grandkids know how lucky they are to have him in their lives, and to take advantage of every moment they have with him to ask him for stories about his life,” Norton said.

Norton said on Sunday her grandfather will be eating one of his favorites, shrimp pasta, for dinner. And for dessert: A root beer float.

Joe Siess is a reporter for The Bend Bulletin, a partner in the Oregon Capital Bureau. Oregon Capital Bureau reporter Gary A. Warner contributed to this story.