In 1908, two years before the first edition of the Sparks Tribune rolled off the presses, Bessie Ching Loo was born in Hawaii.

Today, living in Sparks at age 102, Loo and the Tribune are a part of the town’s history as they march into their second centuries.

In 1963, Roland and Gladys Gruenewald clipped a photo of their daughter from the pages of the Sparks Tribune. It was to be the first of many issues of the paper the couple would have delivered to their doorstep over the next 47 years.

Today, as the paper’s longest subscribers, the Gruenewalds are a living example of why the Tribune has continued as the hometown paper for 100 years.

Born on May 26, 1908, Loo lived the life of a woman who was well ahead of her time — a time she would eventually live to see happen for all women. As a child, her first vehicle was a horse and buggy and her first experience with electronics was an RCA “Red Seal” phonograph record. Her family kept with the times and when Henry Ford introduced the first mass-produced automobile, the Model T, her family bought one.

“We felt so rich,” she said.

Living in Hawaii, she recalls reading the Hawaii Star Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper. As a teen, she got a job at the Princess Theater, where news was brought to residents on Movietone newsreels.

“The first time a talkie came it was so exciting,” she said.

As a young Asian woman of the 1930s, Loo left her island home on her own to attend college in New York City where she attended Columbia University. In 1948, Loo was raising a family in Palo Alto, Calif., when she got her first television set. Bonnie Woo, her daughter, remembers it had a 10-inch black-and-white monitor and her father bought a magnifying glass to put in front of it. They would take turns inviting neighbors over to watch shows like “The Ten Most Wanted.”

“We’d wait all day for 15 minutes,” Woo, 67, said of the limited programming of the time. “We couldn’t figure out can they see us? We can see them, but can they see us?”

From there it was on to color television and news icons such as Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley. Not only did the Loo family watch the news, they were part of it. Bessie Loo’s brother worked for the Associated Press helping establish the first wireless service across the Pacific Ocean with Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.

In 1960, the Gruenewald family moved to Sparks from South Dakota. Roland and Gladys brought their two daughters, 10-year-old Barbara and 6-year-old Kay, from farm life to city life in northern Nevada. Once the children were enrolled in school and the family settled into a church, they chose the Sparks Tribune to keep up on local activities. After all, when the kids’ pictures were in the paper copies had to be clipped and sent back to grandma.

Living in Sparks for all these years, the Gruenewalds have seen a lot of changes. As with most longtime residents, the thing they have noticed most is that there are more people and more traffic. They have owned two houses here in their 50 years and have seen a lot of ups and downs in jobs and real estate. Their favorite entertainment venue has been John Ascuaga’s Nugget, which they have seen grow from a modest casino and coffee shop to the resort it is today.

Though their children are now grown with children of their own, Roland and Gladys still receive the Sparks Tribune and look at the church and school coverage, even though Barbara and Kay’s pictures no longer appear.

Whether longtime residents of Sparks such as the Gruenewalds or longtime residents of the world who spend part of it here such as Loo, the Sparks Tribune needs them to tell and sell the compelling stories of life that pass through the Rail City.