To celebrate her 100th birthday, Lady Margaret had a long birthday week of celebrations going out with different friends and family members all week.
She celebrated her birthday with family and friends with a morning tea at Duart Rest Home and Hospital in Havelock North - which supplied bubbles, not thinking it would get used. The group ended up going through three or four bottles at 10 in the morning.
Lady Margaret explained that with a mixture of 31 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she had to have a whole separate lunch just to celebrate with them.
She said, “all the birthday celebrations were the very happiest of occasions”.
Lady Margaret was born on November 21, 1923 in Palmerston, Otago - not Palmerston North, Manawatū, as she made very clear.
She grew up in Palmerston and lived there until she was 18, then her family moved to Waverley and Lady Margaret lived at home with them until she was 19.
At 19, she started her Karitane nurse training, which involved 16 months of intensive instruction and practical experience in a Karitane hospital, and a further four months’ practical work in private New Zealand homes.
Lady Margaret did several years of nursing and then she happened to meet somebody very special, her now late husband, Hastings-born Sir Richard “Dick” Harrison, who became the Speaker of the House of Parliament from 1978 to 1984.
However, before he was Speaker of the House, he was just her husband, she says. The two married in 1948 and moved into a house in Takapau, where they had four children.
The couple grew all of their own food, Lady Margaret said. “My husband had a beautiful garden and when he died, I continued it.”
After years of farm-to-table cooking, she is Duart Rest Home’s biggest food critic, always giving the cooks pointers on what they can work on for next time.
Lady Margaret has been at Duart for more than a year now and she says she is well cared for.
Her family and the staff at the rest home say she has been “ageing backwards” since being in the Havelock North home.
Situated on the main corridor, there is not much that gets past Lady Margaret. She is as sharp as a tack and always ready to dive into a conversation on anything with anyone who pops in to see her.
When asked what the secret to living till 100 is, Lady Margaret said: “I don’t know the secret, all I can say is, I’ve enjoyed my life and it was very interesting all the years my husband was in Parliament - that’s all you’re getting - he was there for 21 years and we did a lot of travelling.”
Lady Margaret said, however, the biggest part of her life and what has kept her going has been surrounding herself with her family.
