Ella Wilson had a song in her heart as she turned 109 today.
“I’m 109 today, 109 today,” sang the Rotorua resident, who is believed to be New Zealand’s second oldest living person.
“I’m lucky to be here, but it wasn’t easy,” Wilson told the Rotorua Daily Post.
The resident of Bupa’s The Gardens Care Home in Rotorua has lost her sight and hearing but was energetic for her big day.
Staff said she is the eldest resident to ever live in a Bupa care home internationally.
Wilson was born on June 28 in 1914.
She has lived through pandemics, war and has outlived two of her children.
She said the key to living to 109 was to “just get on with it”.
Wilson celebrated her birthday on Sunday with around 30 family friends.
“It was just lovely. They all enjoyed themselves and all had a jolly good time together,” she said.
A birthday afternoon high tea celebration was meant to take place at the care home on Wednesday, but it had to be cancelled due to an outbreak of gastro in the village. Bupa is planning a celebration next week for residents.
Wilson lost her mother to the Spanish Flu epidemic at the age of four and was then separated from her father and four brothers.
She left school around age 15 to become a seamstress. She recalls using a wash copper to boil her clothes and hand-ringing them before hanging them to dry.
Wilson said as children, they would hand-make bloomers and rompers from Champion-brand flour bags, which were made of muslin, to wear under clothing.
She remembers being a child and playing on a trolley cart built with friends.
“When I bent over, Champion Flour was right across my backside.”
“[In] those days if you bought flour you’d buy [it] in a good material.”
Bigger flour bags were made into aprons and pillowcases. She said every resource was looked after.
“That’s when we all learned to sew and knit everything. We just had to.”
Wilson said a “hot dinner” was a Sunday tradition. She added there were “very few cars” on the roads and no phones or electricity in her youth.
At 21, she married John Wilson and the couple went on to have three children; Joan, Jim and John.
John, who died at age 72, was absent for long periods as he went to war. Wilson stayed at their Cambridge home and cared for the children.
She lived for 50 years in her Hamilton home as a valued community member, contributing volunteered time to fundraise for the Melville Community Hall.
Wilson moved to Rotorua about 10 years ago.
Her youngest son, 71-year-old John, said making it to age 109 was an “achievement”.
He recalled his mother participating in his sibling’s sporting events such as rowing championships, often making crepe paper leis for the children.
“It was all happy memories.”
He added her generation typically was not “handed life on a plate” and had to work for what they had.
“Through the Depression and Dad being away at the war [they learned] the value of money and importance of little things like food.”
John Wilson said his mother has always been good at managing money. If other residents in the home do not eat their peas at dinner, “she says they’re bloody stupid”.
He liked to take his mother shopping for clothes when visiting from Auckland.
“She loves going to Millers and she touches everything on the racks.”
With tears in his eyes, he said: “She’s marvellous”.
Michaela Pointon is an NZME reporter based in the Bay of Plenty and was formerly a feature writer.
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