Centenarian Vi Cassin (left) had a birthday visit from Tukituki MP Catherine Wedd (right).
Centenarian Vi Cassin (left) had a birthday visit from Tukituki MP Catherine Wedd (right).
Vi Cassin, nee Avison, turned 100 on October 31.
She was nervous ahead of the celebration, but “as soon as I got to the door of the venue and the bagpipes started, I lost all my nerves and just enjoyed it”.
The event began with the sound of the bagpipes ushering her into the Elwood Function Centre in Hastings, included a song and a haka performed by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and ended with a family barbecue in her own extensive garden with Vi playing keyboard.
Vi has five children, 13 grandchildren, 25 great-grands and 2 great great grandchildren. All were at her milestone celebration except one, who stayed in Australia as there was a great great grandchild about to be born, due on Vi’s 100th birthday but actually arriving the day before.
Vi turned 100 while still holding a driver’s licence, owning her own car, living in her own home and still tending her huge flower and vegetable garden.
Vi Cassin, nee Avison, was born in Waipawa on October 31, 1924.
While she still plays the keyboard at home and the Piano and Organ Club, she’s given up the entertainment round that once had her playing in most rest homes in Hawke’s Bay, and at the Savage Club.
“I was out two or three times a week playing the keyboard but I had to stop during Covid.”
“I live for music,” says Vi “and for my garden, and my fantastic family.”
Vi was born Violet Blanche Avison, in Waipawa in 1924, the eldest child of Arthur and Dorothy Avison, followed by siblings Janice, Mason and Paul. Arthur was Waipawa’s mail and general goods carrier.
Vi went to Waipawa School, and remembers being there on the day of the Hawke’s Bay earthquake in 1931.
“Each classroom had stoves as heating, so chimney bricks came crashing through the roof. A young teacher stood by the stove to protect us from the bricks and she didn’t move until we were all out.
“We ran into the passage and the bricks were still falling. One narrowly missed me. Then we gathered in the playground and waited to be taken home.”
Vi Cassin, 100, (left) with her sister Janice (right).
At that time home was in Shanley St, but Vi also spent a lot of time at her grandparents’ home in Rathbone St, where she remembers cleaning her grandfather’s boots for “thruppence” and curling up by the fire with her grandmother, as well as trips to Waipukurau by train and to Blackhead Beach by horse and cart.
“They had the most beautiful garden, and they milked a cow for the family. The cypress archway at the front gate was so tall the fire brigade used to bring their ladders and trim it. I spent as much time there as I did at home.”
After her grandfather died, Vi’s father bought the Rathbone St homestead and moved the family in, but not long after he was fatally injured cutting firewood on the property.
Vi left school at the end of her primary school years.
“I didn’t go on to high school. The teachers were disappointed but times were hard. We’d been through the earthquake and the depression.”
Vi worked housekeeping for Dr Norris, but her aunt thought that was not a suitable job for a 16-year-old so took her to live in Napier where she worked at Anderson’s Nursery planting out seedlings.
“Andersons wanted to train me up, and I was very keen but my aunt moved to Haumoana and insisted I go with her. My uncle worked at the Whakatu freezing works and there was a job going in the bag room, so that’s where I went.”
It turned out to be a stroke of luck for Vi, as she met a man called Paddy Cassin. Her future husband.
Paddy was called up for World War II, and sent home a message ... ”Tell Vi to write to me”.
She did, and when he came back he asked her out.
They were married on May 17, 1947 and moved into their house in Mayfair, where Vi still lives.
Vi worked as a seamstress in the Westermans building, a job she gave up when she became pregnant. But the skills she’d learnt were “a Godsend”.
“I sewed our clothes, turned coats inside out, and a girl who worked at Rush Munro’s taught me smocking.”
The couple always had a vege garden, and when Paddy retired after 50 years he went straight to the back of their 2000 sq m section and turned it into the large vege garden Vi still enjoys.
She also tends a lush flower garden, which includes flowers transplanted from her grandparents’ Waipawa home, most specifically chrysanthemums that lined the front path and a banksia rose that once covered an archway. She has shared cuttings with family and the heritage plants now flourish as far away as Auckland.
A family anecdote recalls Vi collecting cuttings of plants wherever she went often while they “kept a lookout”.
Vi Cassin, 100, with her four sons and daughter, Mark (left), Brian, Sheena, Kevin and Brian.
Music is another cornerstone of Vi’s life. She learned piano as a child and remembers her brother Mason was also meant to go to lessons.
“He would run straight past the teacher’s gate and keep on going.”
But Vi loved her lessons, learning the organ, then when a hip replacement prevented her from operating the pedals she played the keyboard.
She’s even played the organ in the iconic Church of the Good Shepherd on the shores of Lake Tekapo, unable to resist when she popped in as a tourist.
Vi loves to travel - to the South Island and to Australia where she saw Phantom of the Opera twice.
“I’ve been around” she quips. “When I got my driver’s licence and my Mum’s old car it opened up a whole new world to me. I used to drive that car - a Ford Prefect - all the way to Wellington and back.
When she got a later model car she was a frequent traveller to Auckland as well, taking the opportunity to upgrade her sheet music and her keyboard at Cassin’s Music Shop, paid for by selling dolls she made.
These days her favourite trip is to “the supermarket, the library and Mitre 10”.
Vi says she’s always been busy, and she puts her age down to “an onion and a bottle of beer, every day,” as well as having “a wonderful family who look after me and would do anything for me”.
