100th birthday



Today I'm paying tribute to a woman who celebrates life with each passing day. Alfie's aunt turned one hundred years old today.

One hundred! That's 36,500 days. 876,013 hours. 52,560,819 minutes. 3,153,649,166 seconds.

So much has happened since Aunty Ivy was born in 1911*.

  • 1911 was the first year that California women were allowed to vote.
  • In 1911, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium
  • In 1911, British physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered the structure of an atom.
  • The first auto electric start was installed in a Cadillac By GM in 1911 (no more cranking handles!)
  • In 1911, revolutionaries in China overthrew the Manchu dynasty and declared Sun Yat-sen president of the Chinese Republic
  • In 1911, a US first-class stamp cost 2 cents.
  • Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the year at 81.68, up slightly from 81.36 at the end of 1910.
Aunty Ivy has lived through two world wars, five British monarchs, twenty-three British prime ministers, and eighteen US presidents.

She has never taken a high blood pressure pill in her life.

Aunty Ivy has slowed down a bit in her last decade, but she was determined to stick it out to 100 so she could get a telegram from the queen.

She lives in a senior center but does her own cooking and her own laundry. She remembers everyone's name and how they are related to her and what they were doing when she last saw them. Last week she found herself stuck in a faulty elevator for half an hour. Firemen and ambulances were standing by for her once they finally got the elevator working. Aunty Ivy strolled out of that elevator like she was taking her Sunday stroll and told everyone she was going to her room to make a cup of tea.

She's an amazing woman who lives every day to the fullest, in a way that young whippersnappers like us could never understand. We may not be able to understand, but we sure can appreciate.

Happy Birthday Aunty Ivy!


*Info taken from Information Please, Air Force Village, BirthdayFacts.com, ThePeopleHistory.com


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday Ivy - and may there be many more!