The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Mary Rose Durfee turns 103
Mary Rose Durfee celebrates extraordinary life
ONEIDA, N.Y. >> The key to a long life is eating when you’re hungry, and sleeping when you’re tired, says Oneida resident Mary Rose Durfee. And she’d know, seeing as she just celebrated her 103rd birthday.
“This is one of the happiest events of my life,” said Durfee on Friday, as family, friends, staff, and dozens of Extended Care Facility residents celebrated her birthday.
“We are so thankful,” said granddaughter Amanda Larson, president of the Gorman Foundation, which donated $103,000 to the ECF to update its entryway and family area. “Without facilities like the Extended Care Facility in our community, I don’t think my grandma would have lived to be 103.”
Durfee has been a resident of Oneida for several years, and lived in Central New York her entire life. The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, Durfee was born in 1916, the middle child of nine brothers and sisters. She was raised on a hops farm in Waterville during the height of Prohibition, and her parents sold bootlegged liquor in the region. Sometimes, they would hide the booze in Durfee’s bed to keep fromgetting caught, because at the time she was ill and government agents couldn’t enter her room thanks to quarantine
Over the more than 10 decades of her life, Durfee has seen two world wars, the end to Prohibition, the Great Depression and more. She was a single mom in the 1950’s, ran her own restaurant, andwasnamed Hop Queen at the 2003Madison County Hop Fest for her CNY hops advocacy. She is also a published. author in books, newspapers, and periodicals, a talent which was undiscovered until she was 80 years old, with her most recent work published after her 100th birthday. Her book, titled “Scattered Hayseeds,” is available on Amazon.
But of all her accomplishments, one of the ones nearest and dearest to her is being the namesake for the Mary Rose Clinic in Oneida. The clinic,
which opened in 2010 on the Northside, serves under- and uninsured residents, a situation Durfee herself once faced, Larson said. While running her diner, Durfee had no health insurance, so having this service in her name “is an honor,” Durfee said.
“It shows you’re interested and giving all you can,” Durfee said. “We broke the barriers down for health insurance.”