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Amazing Grace going strong at 104

Surrounded by friends, flowers and gifts at her 104th birthday party, Grace Berray poses with her daughter, Linda Prichard.

Born on February 26, 1912, in Lockport, N.Y., Grace Berray has seen plenty and has stories to tell.

 

 

“I was born when movies were very young, and in black and white,” Berray said. She sent off for glossy photographs signed by the early movie stars. John Barrymore was one of her favorites. Back then it was 10 cents to go see a movie. Young Grace collected Family Bread wax paper wrappers from her neighbors because 25 of them earned a free movie ticket.
“Those days are gone forever,” Berray says.
Her father delivered the U.S. mail on a horse-drawn wagon. Her brother Clarence had the only bicycle out of the four children because he had a paper route.
“It was fun, but I was no daredevil,” Berray said of her own experience riding a bicycle.
The family grew up without a car, but the grocery store was within walking distance.
Berray’s Uncle Albert took her on her first car ride. “It was thrilling,” she says. There was no windshield, so snow blew in.
Growing up, Berray took piano lessons once a week for 50 cents, learning to play ragtime and jazz. There was one swimming pool in town but it was for boys only so she didn’t learn to swim.
Lockport, near Niagara Falls, got bitter cold during the winter. Berray remembers making ice cream out of fresh snow by adding vanilla to it.
The local fire department used two white horses to pull a wagon loaded with barrels full of water. “As kids we loved to see the horses galloping down the street with their manes flying in the wind,” Berray says.
She stayed in Lockport until she was 24, when she married Bob Berray. At the time, he was working for a local newspaper making $21 a week. In the fall of 1936, a larger newspaper offered Bob a job paying $60 a week to layout the pages.
“We jumped for joy and went to Rochester to live,” Berray said.
The couple would live there for 30 years and raise two children, Bob and Linda.
In her 40s life in Rochester was filled with excitement for Grace. Outdoor music nights were held in the park at the time, so she tried out and was cast in summer operas. She sang alto and performed all summer.
While in Rochester, Berray also taught pressing and presenting flowers at a big garden center.
“I like geraniums quite well,” she said.
At one point, Berray charged $25 to press and frame wedding bouquets.

A green thumb

For 10 years Berray has lived at Carillon Assisted Living of Hendersonville, where evidence of her green thumb can be seen in windowsill flowerpots. Berray’s husband, Bob, passed away shortly after the couple moved to the mountains.
Carillon Marketing Director Morgan Ortiz said Berray keeps landscapers on their toes during the warmer months and has even been found gardening out back, covered in dirt up to her elbows. She’d rather grow a tomato than buy one at the store.
“You also can’t get tomatoes that taste good during the winter,” she says. “They are red, but have no flavor.”
Linda Prichard, 71, recalls that her mother always “had a lush and beautiful garden.”
Each year, Prichard would take flowers her mother had grown to her teachers at school.
“She planted them with love and care,” Prichard says.
Berray has always been creative and humorous. “She was always very active — walking, gardening, housekeeping, always stirring things up,” Prichard says.
“I keep busy all the time,” Berray says.
She currently enjoys cutting out pictures from magazines and calendars and putting them into photo albums. The collections are filled with birds, flowers and horses.
“My books are my main thing,” she says. She distributes them to nursing homes and doctors’ and dentists’ offices.
“Get a hobby when you’re younger and pursue it into your old age,” she recommends.
When she wakes up in the morning she always knows what she is going to do that day.
“I always enjoyed being busy,” she says, “having something to look forward to.”
She likes to write letters. “My son and I can write reams,” she says. “We don’t care too much for talking on the telephone.”
Berray reads biographies of famous people to find out why they became famous. The Kennedys and the Roosevelts are among her favorites. She especially admired FDR as a president.
Berray says she can’t believe what computers can do. She’s seen enough change to know that new inventions are always around the corner.
“We don’t know what’s out there that’s going to be coming in the next 50 years,” she adds.
“They send a man to the moon and there’s still all these people that need to be fed — it doesn’t seem right to spend all that money,” she said.
“Things are going a little too fast,” Berray said. “Politics is way out of line, especially the way they talk to each other.”