Radius Residential Care

Oldest Resident Set to Celebrate 104 years

Mary Young is having a party tomorrow and she certainly has something to celebrate: she is turning an incredible 104 years of age.

Mary intends celebrating her historic birthday and remarkable old age with a special cake at Radius Potter Home in Whangarei where she now resides.

Born on 11th February 1906 Mary is the oldest rest home resident at Radius Potter Home and believes that the secret to her ripe old age and good health is a life lived according to good Christian Principles. Mary believes that you can’t beat good old fashioned values and that a good philosophy to live by is “Do unto others as you would be done by”.

Exercise is also important for good health says Mary who has never suffered ill health and loves to garden and used to play plenty of tennis, golf and bowls with her late husband Charlie Young. Mary can also attest that she has never once smoked or drunk alcohol and although now blind and deaf she stills listens to the radio and goes for regular walks through the corridors and gardens at Radius Potter Home.

The youngest of 10 children, Mary (nee Stevens) was born in Mangatapere and attended Whangarei Girls High School before marrying electrician Charlie Young. The couple later went farming in Ruakaka and ‘kept the home fires burning’ during the war years. They had a daughter Jill who now lives in Kaikohe with her husband Bruce Gillies. In 1943 the young couple moved back to Crystal Springs in Mangatapere where Mary became a key advocate in keeping the local Mangatapere church alive and her husband continued to farm the family’s jersey dairy cattle. Mary has three grandchildren and four great grandchildren whose lives she follows with great interest.

“It was a good honest farming life lived to the full” says Mary.

ENDS

For further information or images please contact:

Jenna Adams, Assistant Facility Manager Radius Potter Home
Ph (09) 438 2668
jenna.adams@radiushealth.co.nz