Centenarian witnessed coronation
Monica remembers back over long life
At 100 years old, Monica Edith Olsson still has a memory better than most. While yet to receive her 100th birthday card from the royal family, Monica can recall all five monarchs she has lived through, from King George V to the new King Charles.
Born on October 7, 1922, Monica’s early years were spent in Napier until the earthquake in 1931, after which her family moved to Nelson to live with her grandparents.
They then went to live in Wellington where Monica attended Karori School, Wellington Girls’ College and started at Victoria University.
While she managed to do about a year as a teacher, Monica got married, had her first child, and as was normal in those days, stopped working.
With three children, eight grandchildren and nine greatgrandchildren, Monica’s life has been busy with family life and volunteer work.
A highlight included a year in England — slightly longer than their intended six months, but with a seven-week boat ride there and a sixweek boat ride home, the trip was worth it, especially as it was the year of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.
Living in Kingston upon Thames of England for the year, Monica said, “We were there for the Queen’s coronation and camped out on the pavement for the night with my sister and her boyfriend.
“It rained in the night and everybody started singing in the rain.
“At about 2am in the morning, the police came and said ‘everybody stand up, we want to see how many more people we can fit in’.
“We spent all of the coronation day out there at The Mall and went up to St James’ Palace and the Queen Victoria memorial outside Buckingham Palace,” she said.
“Everyone was crying out, ‘we want Charles’ before he goes to bed because at that time he was just a little wee boy.”
On return, Monica and her husband Burt were in Wellington for 18 months before moving to Auckland where they stayed for 40 years.
“I can remember a very different style of telephone — our first one was a wooden phone attached to the wall.
I had to stand up on the stool when I was young to reach it.
“My father gave us his first car, which was a 1923 Dodge, but it was wartime so we couldn’t get new tyres for it.
“Our first working car was a 1938
Vauxhall. But I walked everywhere,” she said.
During her time in Wellington, Monica was heavily involved in Girl Guides and was running the whole programme by the age of 16 because it was wartime and there was no one else to do it.
Taking a break when she had children and moving to Auckland, Monica became involved again when her daughter started in the group.
At various times over the years, she ran the Brownies, Guides and Rangers, became the camp trainer and also worked at the Guide shop fitting youngsters with uniforms and sending them out around the country.
Moving to Peka Peka with her husband after his retirement, Harrisons Garden Centre planted a line of olive trees on their lifestyle block that one year yielded enough olives to turn into olive oil.
“We only did it once because it was quite an intensive process.”
Monica has been at Parkwood for 14 years and this year at the age of 99 she finally downsized into an apartment at The Lodge after living in the house she and her husband had renovated and added to over the years.
Celebrating her birthday with family and friends over the weekend, Monica said the secret to living to 100 was “lots of walking”.