Mary Magdalene Holtrey

“So you’re going to have your 100th birthday next month and they are going to have a party for you here at Fountain Crest Retirement Community,” Mary Magdalene Holtrey was told.

“Do what, they going to have a party for me … oh my, I don’t want all the fuss,” Holtrey exclaimed. “Numbers are just numbers, they don’t mean anything … no reason to have a party for me,” she said waiving her hands in the air.

Known in the Fountain Crest retirement complex on Taylor Lane Extended in Lehigh as “Miss Mary,” her caregiver, Wood Dulaney, said she was among the first to move into the complex and loves every day there.

Dulaney knew Holtrey’s husband for years and when he passed away, Dulaney said he was asked to look out for her and he has and is doing that.

“She’s a jolly lady,” Holtrey, 20 years younger than she is, said. “She’s opinionated and isn’t afraid to say what she feels.”

There’s not much wrong with Miss Mary except for arthritis and now she is hard of hearing. You can keep up a conversation with her if you raise your voice, but even then she will let you know, that she’s not used to hearing you, and will lean over toward Dulaney and bellow out, “What did he say?”

The 100th birthday part is planed for July 10 at the retirement community and those who work at the complex plan a big cake, some balloons and maybe more.

But they better get ready for some admonishment from the woman who turns 100 on that day.

“Numbers don’t meany anything,” she said. “It’s how you feel. We never thought much about how old we were when we were growing up; it just wasn’t important,” she said.

Holtrey’s maiden name was Potts and was born on a farm in 1910 in Van Wert, Ohio.

Like so many women of that generation who went to work, the local telephone office was usually the place of choice and she got a job after graduating from high school at the local phone company as an operator.

When World War II started, she worked for the Atlas Power Co. in Estern Ohio as an operator and from there she moved to Miami, Fla., with her husband who helped to build the railroad to Key West.

And with all her experience, she got a job as a telephone operator for National Airlines and got promoted to head of that department where she remained for about 30 years.

While at National Airlines, Miss Mary and her husband traveled around the world for vacations.

When National Airlines was sold to Pan American in 1980, she retired and moved with her husband to Lehigh Acres.

They were the days that telephone exchanges began to become more modernized and no more were women needed answer phones by pulling plus out of a console and plugging them in another hole and answering the phone with the word “operators.”

Today’s I-pads and pods and cell phones and computers where you can call all over the world and see the people you are talking to mean nothing to Miss Mary.

When she left the telephone business, another era of transportation was about to begin.

Her caregiver said he spends most of his time at her home in Fountain Crest and takes care of her financial needs and makes sure she is not cheated. In fact, she named in power of attorney some years ago.

“She’s quite a lady,” Dulaney mused. “She can give you a argument in no time if she wants. She has her own mind about her … it’s just that now her memory is not as good as it used to be.

Miss Mary wasn’t able to recall much about her childhood except to say she remembered well being on the farm and riding in buggies pulled by a horse.

This was just before the advent of the automobile and in later years, Miss Mary had her share of cars.

Her love of travel took her almost everywhere in the world and it may have been a lot of perks that her tickets since she worked for several airlines.

Fountain Crest is maybe 10 years old and its white glistening siding is like a beckon on Taylor Lane Extended. Originally constructed by the Fleet Reserve for veterans in the community, the complex couldn’t survive just for veterans so it was sold and today any senior citizen can lease an apartment

and the rates are not very high if one has a good Social Security check and a pension check and some investments.

“I love the dining room and the food is great, here,” Miss Mary said.

She walks with a walker and spends most of her time in front of a TV set. She bragged that had always been a Methodist and voted in the last presidential election.

But she says she is not real happy with President Barack Obama; however, she also said, “I must have voted for him; or it could have been that other guy, McCain.”