Close to 100 friends and family members gathered April 1 in Bloomington to celebrate Fred Humphreys’ 105th birthday.
For the last 75 years Humphreys has lived in Bloomington. He arrived in town shortly before mega developers Marv Anderson and Orin Thompson turned the farm fields of old Bloomington into the Twin Cities largest suburb in the mid-1950s.
Humphreys couldn’t wait for developers to build a house for him. He did it by himself — brick-by-brick and board-by-board — on Wentworth Avenue in East Bloomington, a block south of West 86th Street. The project began in 1948 and finished with Humphreys and his wife Grace moving into the modest dwelling in 1950. Grace helped build the home along with Fred’s dad, Fred Sr., and Fred’s brother, Bud…