Jens Pedersen celebrated his 90th birthday Sunday at the Point Robinson keeper’s quarters, the place he lived for more than a decade — from 1936 to 1945 — while his father was a keeper at the lighthouse.

Joined by family and friends who mingled, ate food provided by the island’s Pink Tractor Farm, talked, listened to live music and spilled out of the keeper’s house onto the surrounding lawn and beach, Pedersen reminisced about his time growing up in the house with his sisters. Standing in the home’s small living room, Pedersen said that the house has changed a lot since he lived there and that the small room he was standing in would become the sole useable room in the winter because it was the only room with a wood stove.

“It was freezing in the winters,” he said. “There used to be a big stove, and we would close off all the other rooms and just live in here. There was no heating upstairs, so there was no way anyone was going up there.”

He was 10 years old when his dad became the Point Robinson keeper, but his family lived throughout the Pacific Northwest as his dad went from lighthouse to lighthouse.

“I was born in Astoria, Oregon. My dad was out at Tillamook Rock and my mom had me all by herself,” he said. “From there, we went to Cape Meares, Oregon; Seattle; Tatoosh Island and then Turn Point in the San Juans. But then my sister had to go to high school, and the San Juans only had elementary school, so my dad put in a transfer to either Alki or Point Robinson.”

Pedersen attended school on the island until 1955 when, during his senior year, he was drafted into the military for two years, but returned and received his diploma in 1957.

He went on to work in the steel and automotive industries before working as a deckhand on the Washington State Ferries.

“That put me on deck, which is where I liked to be,” he said Sunday.

Pedersen still lives in Burton in a house he helped build that was completed in 1968.