Staff steps out to embrace treasured customer
A Kelowna woman celebrated her 102nd birthday this week with a group of well-wishers gathered outside her Lower Mission condominium.
Employees of Save-On Foods, a nearby grocery store where Elsie Chandler has shopped for many years, brought over some treats and balloons, then sang Happy Birthday to her as she smiled and waved from her second-storey bedroom window.
“Over the years, Elsie has become a real favourite with the Save-On employees, with her regular shopping visits,” said Chandler’s friend, George Johnson.
“When they came over to wish her happy birthday, it was a very moving experience,” Johnson added. “Cars slowed down and pedestrians gawked.”
In other years, Chandler — who lives independently — has hosted the supermarket employees, other building residents, and friends inside her one-bedroom suite on her birthday. One year, even a few strangers showed up after reading an article in which Chandler, who has no family in Kelowna, said she was feeling a bit lonesome after having outlived many of her friends.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic made such an indoor party impossible but Chandler’s birthday was still celebrated.
Building manager Ken Schneider placed posters about Chandler’s big day throughout the building and she received telephone calls all day long, including from her son and his family in Alberta. But the outside visitors were a surprise.
“It was a wonderful visit,” Chandler said. “I’m so grateful they came over to see me.”
Asked if the physically-distanced nature of her 102nd birthday made the day any less enjoyable than past birthdays, she said: “Listen, honey, when you’re as old as I am, any type of birthday is a good birthday.”
In 2016, according to Statistics Canada, there were only 45 people in Kelowna 100 or older.
On her 100th birthday in 2019, Chandler was asked what one thing she would like to try but hadn’t gotten around to yet. She responded: “To pilot an aeroplane! I feel it is not wrong to ask for the impossible, but I know no one else would want to fly with me.”
Last month, Chandler said she hoped she would soon receive the COVID-19 vaccination. Despite her age, she wasn’t in the government’s top priority class because she isn’t a resident of a long-term care home.
“My health is fine,” she said in January. “If I open both my eyes in the morning and am able to put both my feet on the ground, I’m ready to go. I think, ‘God’s given me another day, so I better make the most of it’.”
As of this week, Chandler was still waiting on her vaccine. “I just hope I get it before I go toes up,” she said with a laugh. “They can stick it in my arm or anywhere else they want to.”
Before the Save-On employees left the lawn outside Chandler’s building and returned to work, there was a moment that typified the unique nature of this particular birthday.
“As an expression of their love for Elsie,” Johnson says, “the manager removed his mask and blew Elsie a kiss.”