Nancy chalks up another birthday
Nancy Francis is not sure how she got to be 106 years old.
“It’s a mystery, actually,” she says.
Nancy, now a resident at Virginia Lodge Rest Home, reached that milestone last Saturday and enjoyed a lowkey celebration with friends and family.
“I’ve enjoyed my life.”
If her smile and easy laugh is anything to go by, she certainly has.
There are lots of newspaper stories about Nancy, but she always comes up with new, untold revelations.
She says she gave up smoking when she was about 60, considering the habit a waste of money.
“It got too expensive. After I knocked off I’d make the bed and come down and stand by the breakfast room table, and I’d wonder why I was there. It was to light a cigarette because that’s what I’d been doing for years.”
Nancy was 104 and looking after herself in her own home, when she had a fall and succumbed to the fact she needed to be looked after in a rest home.
“I broke my shoulder and never went back home. I had been living there for 80-odd years.”
She chose Virginia Lodge on Great North Rd, a place where her daughter Carole had worked years before.
Her husband, Owen Francis, died at 95.
Nancy’s eyesight’s going and she wears hearing aids, but holding a conversation is still easy.
“I’ve had a happy life. I’ve certainly nothing to complain about. I’ve always been healthy.” She put her good health down to being “short and solid”.
“My mother and father were both quite short.”
She remembers the commotion made by workshop and factory whistles when World War I ended. Nancy was nearly six. She had been in Wanganui for three years, having arrived with her family from Geraldine in the South Island. They lived in Tay St, Aramoho.
“When there were floods, the river would be covered all the way across with logs, cows and sheep. People would be crossing Somme Parade and Anzac Parade with wheelbarrows, collecting wood.”
Nancy has witnessed a lot of change over 106 years. I asked her what she missed the most.
“Going to a dance at the
weekend. Because my sister was eight years older than me, when I was about 15 or 16 I was allowed to go to the dance with her. I loved it.”
They held regular dances at the boat clubs. Aramoho was the closest but she often took a tram to town to attend a dance at Union Boat Club.
“I used to walk around to Calver’s Corner and take the Glasgow St tram to the post office.”
She remembers going to dances with a group of about four girls, all former “Tech” students [Wanganui Technical College, now Whanganui City College].
“I didn’t like school.” After leaving school she stayed at home for a while then got a job at Wanganui Woollen Mills.
Random memories peppered the conversation. Her older sister worked at AD Willis, making playing cards. “She had a lovely head of hair and she’d come home with it covered in the powder they use on the cards. There was AD Willis and HI Jones and they were opposite each other [in the Bridge Block]. They both had the same type of shop with books, stationery, toys and fancy goods.
“I must have met Owen at a Union dance, to start with. He had a Norton motorbike. Our ambition was to go over to the Isle of Man TT but we never got there.” She loved riding pillion.
“I always sat up close but I never hung on: I had my hands in my pockets the whole time. I clung on with my knees.” The bike had two separate saddles, the pillion one being a later addition, Nancy recalls. She wanted to show me a photo but remembered it’s probably packed away somewhere.
Owen and Nancy married at St Lawrence’s Church in Aramoho when she was 21. They lived in a rented house in Swiss Ave until they sold the motorbike and used the money to buy a section at 10 Moore Ave where they built their forever home.
“Moore Avenue used to be a stock route.” Their first car was a Willy’s, a former taxi.
“Owen finished up painting cars in our back yard. He started out painting the gasworks’ truck, even though he didn’t know anything about painting, but he could do anything.
“We had three wonderful kids. They never gave us any trouble.” She thinks for a moment. “They’re all old age pensioners now,” she says with some surprise. As I left I wished her happy birthday.
“Thank you for calling,” she said. “You can come to the next one if you like.”
I’ll be there Nancy.