Shirley Wright reckons there isn’t a secret to living to 100, but her active and independent lifestyle may have had something to do with it.
Born in Auckland on 18 November 1924, Shirley celebrated her 100th birthday with her nearest and dearest at her home at Abbeyfield Mata Close, in Tāhunanui last Thursday.
Shirley laughs that the men of the neighbourhood were using the occasion as an excuse to shower kisses on her cheeks, although she didn’t seem to mind too much.
Shirley and her two children moved to Nelson in the 1990s, but she later headed back to Auckland, joining the Abbeyfield community for nine years.
She has always been fiercely independent, still driving until she was 90 and, after, remaining very active, heading out on buses to different parts of Auckland most days.
But after her son Murray retired, Shirley wanted to be closer to family, so moved back to Nelson four years ago, joining Abbeyfield Mata Close.
“As you can see, it’s pretty good,” she quips of her home and the surrounding neighbourhood, who all turned out to celebrate her milestone.
Shirley remembers vividly the best moment in her life – when WWII was declared to be over. She had been nursing soldiers who had returned from the islands.
“We nursed them at the Ellerslie Racecourse bar because they didn’t know what to do with them,” she says. “All we had was a water trough to wash them. The news came through at 12 o’clock at night, and they said we can wake the patients an hour early,” she recalls.
So at 5am, a gentle tap on the shoulder roused the soldiers.
“People that had had an operation just got out and danced with somebody else,” she says, remembering the joy everyone felt. “I think that was the best moment of my life,” she recalls, emotions still present almost 80 years later.
Shirley later married and had two children.
“My father was a builder and I married the apprentice,” she recalls of the marriage in 1950. “Being a builder, we started off with a brand-new house, although it took him two years to finish it.”
Her marriage lasted 11 years, so she raised two children under 10 on her own.
“As sort of a settlement, I had enough money to buy a very, very old house with scrim walls, the kids delighted in pulling scrim off the walls,” she laughs of the Mt Albert home.
Shirley then worked as a surgical corsetiere and continued caring for others well into retirement, spending hours volunteering for the local Hospice. Murray recalls Shirley travelling solo through China where she couldn’t speak a word of the language.
He says in the last few years, she has shied away from volunteering and being part of clubs as she doesn’t want to feel unreliable if she doesn’t have the energy to attend the regular commitments.
And how did she feel about being the centre of attention for the day?
“A little overwhelmed,” she says. “This is unbelievable.”
“She didn’t realise that she had so many acquaintances and friends,” Murray adds.
Her card from King Charles arrived last Monday on her birthday as did another from the Prime Minister and one from the Governor General.
Shirley was looking forward to a good afternoon nap after the festivities.
