On America’s 250th birthday, Lynnwood veteran will turn 103

Published 8:00 am Friday, July 3, 2026

LYNNWOOD — While people across the country celebrate America’s 250th birthday, Otis Lull’s family will be celebrating another milestone.

On Saturday, Lull, who served in the U.S. Army for 20 years, will turn 103.

“That’s quite a coincidence, I feel honored to be born on that day,” Lull said.

Lull was born in San Francisco in 1923. Four years later, his family moved to Woodinville to a 5-acre farmhouse. When he was school aged, his family moved to the Capitol Hill area in Seattle. He began living the Lynnwood area as an adult.

His dad was born in 1877, and his mom was born in 1886.

“Not many people can tell you that their dad was born as early as 1877 that are still alive now,” he said.

Lull served in the Army for 20 years, working with the Army’s communications system. He primarily served in Alaska, but also spent some time in Seattle and Germany.

In Alaska, he was stationed all over, from Anchorage to Juneau and Kodiak to the Aleutian Islands.

“The Japanese were there, they had occupied the island that I was at,” he said. “Most people don’t know that they occupied part of the Aleutian chain.”

Lull and his first wife, Betty, had five children. Betty died in the ’90s, and he later married his second wife, Dorothy, who died in 2016. Lull has a total of 52 grandkids over four generations.

Any day now, Lull is expecting another great-great-great grandchild, and the baby’s birthday could coincide with his own. If the baby is a boy, he’ll be named Otis.

“The name would represent a powerful connection across generations, symbolizing family heritage, service, and the continuation of a legacy,” Lull’s great-great granddaughter, Lauren Ng, wrote in a statement to The Herald on Wednesday.

From 1989 to 2020, Lull would spend his mornings walking at Alderwood Mall before it opened for the day. He estimated he walked about 25,000 miles in those years. Every once and a while, he’ll still go to the mall and visit with friends that he made.

“I really enjoyed my walking,” he said. “When you walk quite a ways, at the end of it, you always feel kind of a natural high. It’s really a good feeling, like you’ve really accomplished something.”

One of Lull’s top pieces of advice for making it to 103 is to eat well.

“I push bananas,” he said. “I think bananas are really good to eat, they’re good for you.”

Despite his age, Lull still enjoys driving every now and then.

“I really do feel younger than my age, probably by quite a bit,” he said.

When asked about his interests, Lull said: “Staying alive, I guess that would be No. 1.”

He also plays cribbage a couple of times a week and plays 10,000 — a dice game also known as Farkle — with his daughter, Merry Ransier, every morning and night.

Ransier moved in with Lull to help him with everyday tasks like cooking and cleaning.

As a kid, Ransier remembers playing games with her siblings, like sending a marble through the vacuum cleaner hose to knock down dominoes and stacking bottle caps before they had Legos. She said Lull would get down on the floor and play with them.

“Being in the military, when we moved around we didn’t have friends right away, so we were our own best friends,” Ransier said. “And that has lasted us through the years.”

Right now, Lull said he takes things one day at a time. On Tuesday, he said he was looking forward to his daughter coming to visit later that day.

Jenna Peterson: 425-339-3486; jenna.peterson@heraldnet.com; X: @jennarpetersonn.