‘Determined’ Lily is 100
A WOMAN described by her daughter as ‘a determined lady who worked hard all her life’ has celebrated her 100th birthday.
Lily Gray was brought up in Miles Platting before moving to Newton Heath when she married, but for the past seven years has lived at Bruce Lodge care home in Offerton.
Staff at the home threw her a party attended by family and friends to mark her centenary, which her daughter Norma Bird said was ‘brilliant’.
“It was more than I expected,” she said. “Mum has Alzheimer’s now but she seemed to really enjoy it.”
Lily married her husband Douglas Gray shortly before World War Two and Norma was born around two years before her dad returned from serving abroad.
She was the couple’s only child and Lily now has two grandchildren and six greatgrandchildren. Norma, 73, said: “Mum went to work in the munitions factories and when my dad first went to war she went back to live with her mum, but by the time he came back she had set up a home for us.
“She was a seamstress making shirts and dresses. She also worked collecting the money for doctors’ bills, as this was the days before the NHS. She had many tales to tell.
“She was always a very determined lady and she still is.
“She looked after my dad when he had a stroke and after he died 23 years ago she lived on her own until she was 93.”