Family celebrates 100 years with Grace

JENNA THOMPSON

GRACE Boxsell just might hold the secret to living a long and happy life as the Blue Haven Retirement Village resident celebrated her 100th Birthday at the weekend.

“She’s well on her way to 120,” said daughter Esma Herbert. “Probably because we kept saying to her, ‘we’ve got to get you over the line, mum’!”

Born in Druwalla, Jamberoo, in 1908, Mrs Boxsell was warmly described by friends and family as a loving and hard-working mum of six.

“Mum did the milking on our dairy farm,” said her eldest daughter, Eileen Symons.

“She would also do a lot of jam making and preserving fruit; she was always cooking.”

Ms Boxsell’s eldest son, Henry, said she was always a very loving and kind woman, although if he ever got into mischief as a child she’d let him know about it.

“She’d take after you with a big stick or the strap,” he said. “But that was all in life and growing up and realising you’d done something wrong.”

The third eldest of 13 children, Mrs Boxsell left home at 19 and married Hammond “Russell” Boxsell on April 4, 1928, and they rented a small farm near Saddleback Mountain.

From there she raised their six children – two boys and four girls – until Russell died in 1958. She stayed on the farm until 1962, when she then moved to Kiama with her son George and daughter Hazel.

She moved into Blue Haven Retirement Village on July 1, 2005.

Not many of us would get to 100, but Henry said that reaching a century seemed to run in her side of the family.

“Her mother, Grandma Jones, lived to be 100 and six-months,” he said.

So what’s the secret?

“I don’t know what it is, but I hope a little bit rubs off,” he said.