Once featured on a national television program, the “Drive Carefully Avoid Accidents” sign at Killam is familiar to most Flagstaff residents, but you wouldn’t expect it to appear on a birthday cake for a resident of Beaverton, Oregon.

But that’s exactly what Duane Nelson got for his 86th birthday this month.

Nelson was born in January 1935 in the Killam Hospital, and lived on the Stonewall farm four miles south on Highway 36, “On the hill just west of the coulee,” he says.

In 1946, Nelson says his folks decided, due to his mother’s health, to move to the coast of Washington state. He says, “I was 11 years old, and missed my friends and dog, Carlo.

“Over the years I always had the need to come back to see friends and walk the ground that I’ve always told my boys about.” Nelson has two sons, Darin, 53, and Dustin, 50. He says, “My boys have known all their lives how comfortable their lives were compared to what I had on the farm in the early 1940s.”

Nelson has returned to the Killam area six or eight times since moving away, the last time two years ago with his nephew Denny.

“We visited with Ralph and Jean Sorenson; I have to say that all my other friends have passed.”

Rosemary Weeks of Killam says her father Gilbert Bergeson was friends with Nelson’s father and older brother and stayed in touch, which is how she came to receive the photo of Duane’s birthday cake, which she shared with The Community Press.

Nelson’s son Dustin and his wife Heidi own a bakery in Vancouver, Washington.

“They have created many wonderful cakes over the years; this one, however, does take ‘the cake!’

“I was struck how realistic it looked to the sign and with it all being edible!”

Nelson has been retired since 1997, after 35 years in retail management, at Woolworths and Ross stores.

He’s never lost his affection for the region and his experiences living here.

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Leslie Cholowsky,
Editor