At the age of 90, Bill Thomas can still be seen walking to and from work every day.

"I've walked as long as I can remember," he said. "I really do attribute my health to that fact."

Thomas said he's in the habit of walking from his home to work, a distance of about half a mile, every day.

With trips home for lunch, that adds up to about two miles a day.

Thomas has been involved in many facets of Lebanon's community, from school to hospital boards,and was the very first Junior Citizen and a Senior Citizen.

"I could not have done any of it without her," Thomas said, referring to his wife, Helen.

Thomas was born on April 4, 1919, in West Salem, where he lived with his mother, father, two sisters and a brother.

"When I was a child, I worked in the hop fields," he said. "When we lived in West Salem, there was not much anyone could do in the way of work; it was the 1930s with the Great Depression. We went and camped about a month on Wigrich Ranch to pick hops. We got paid by the pound. You'd be lucky if you made a dollar a day."

"I got a better job working at the service station, where I got $1.25 a day," Thomas said.

Thomas would walk to school and back as a child. He went to high school in Salem.

Thomas said the main thing that has impressed him about Lebanon is it has continued to grow all along.

"Many of the small towns are having a terrible time, and Lebanon has done well," he said. "It seems there are new businesses all the time."

He said the secret is location.

"It's a pretty spot," Thomas said, "close to the mountains. The weather's pretty good. We don't have severe weather, though we did used to have some pretty bad flooding problems until they built Green Peter Dam and that other dam at Foster. We had a rowboat parked in our driveway."

He met his wife, Helen, at Willamette University, where he studied law.

They married in 1943 and moved to Lebanon, where Bill worked for Lawrence Morley as a clerk until he finished the Oregon Bar.

He and Morley started their partnership in 1944.

When the Thomases first came to Lebanon, there were slightly fewer than 3,000 people in town. Now there's nearly 15,000.

"In the 1940s, Lebanon was truly a small town," Thomas said. "It was a Saturday town. The people gathered in the streets on Saturday and did their shopping. Everyone came out on Saturday."

Thomas was student body president, starting in junior high and into college.

He said student body governments keep the kids involved in school.

"I've been in various speaking contests," Thomas said. "I went to the national contest in Jacksonville, Ill."

Thomas remembers being a teenager in the Great Depression. He said it's just as bad now in terms of unemployment.

"So many are losing jobs right now," he said. "As I remember the stock market crash in 1927 was somewhat the start of it. Lots of soup lines in the big cities, and it was generally very bad. It would be hard to compare (to today)."

He compared the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal to the current stimulus act.

He said the Albany Courthouse was built with WPA monies, as were the big bridges on the coast.

"I don't think there's any question that the WPA got things going again," he said. "It put things to work."

Thomas noted the money from the stimulus act has already affected the stock market.

"That much money into the economy can't help but do it some good," he said.

He and Helen have two daughters - Eileen McHill and Martha Hurley. Helen raised them while Bill was running around to board meetings and out-of-town meetings, he said.

They have four grandchildren.