By KARLA POMEROY
More than 100 family and friends braved the blizzard to trek to First Baptist Church in Basin and wish Ned Kost a happy 90th birthday.
Kost was born Jan. 24, 1920, in Cowley to Ned and Helen Kost. When he was 13 years old, the family moved out to Orchard Bench to farm. Ned graduated from Basin High School and worked on the family farm and other odd jobs for about a year. He said he would work at the Big Horn Co-Op shoveling beans out of the old boxcars. “They were dirty, smoky and dusty,” he said.
He then decided to enlist in the Navy and served 20 years, retiring in 1960. He said his father was “upset that I joined the Navy because I was the best farmhand he ever had.” To replace Ned on the farm, he said his father went and bought a tractor.
He joined the Navy because “I always liked their clothing and it was a clean place to work.” He said he liked it as well because he got to choose which field to go into and he chose aviation becoming a radioman.
Kost was stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese “tore the thing up” and he was transferred to a nearby seaplane base. He said he would travel in the seaplanes and communicate with other troops through code as the radioman.
He was later transferred to San Diego and toward the end of World War II he ended up in Iwo Jima.
“I was in Pearl Harbor at the beginning of the war and at Iwo Jima at the end,” he said. While stationed overseas, he said his assignment then was to ride with the planes as they looked for survivors of downed planes and they would drop supplies to them in the water to help them survive until they were rescued.
He said there were still many Japanese soldiers living in caves in Iwo Jima while they were there. “We did a lot of cave diving and one time we did finally find some loot. There they were lined up like eggs — grenades,” he said, adding that the Japanese had left the grenades there as they left the area in a hurry.
Following World War II he married his wife Helen (who passed away in 1992). They had three children, Jim (who died in 2002), Richard who lives in Monrovia, Liberia and Hazel VanLandingham who lives in Basin.
The family traveled with Ned when he was stationed in Saipan for three years and in Guam for another three years.
In 1960 the family moved back to Orchard Bench to a farm that Ned had purchased while in the service.
After all the places he had visited, Ned said he was glad to come back to Big Horn County. “It’s a damn rat race trying to drive anyplace (other than Wyoming). It’s quiet here. In the city there’s constant noise,” Kost said.
He expanded his 40-acre farm when he purchased another 40-acre farm, growing beans for a time and then switching to hay.
He retired in 1990 and sold the farm moving to his home at 102 S. Seventh. Helen passed away in 1992.
Ned enjoys hunting and fishing but said he doesn’t get to do it much because his back is out of shape and bouts with pneumonia the past few years has him on oxygen.
During his party, as a picture of him in his younger years shone on the wall of the reception hall, Ned said, “If you’d told me back then I’d live until I’m 90 I’d never have believed you.” In an interview Monday he said, “Ninety years was a long time back then. Now it’s not so uncommon.” His father, he noted, lived to be 87.
His secret to long life — “You drink prune juice at night you have to get up in the morning.”