Family Celebrates Matriach’s 100th

Cora May Sayles-Ashley made it to her 100th birthday with some secrets to how she got there: traveling, cooking, church-going faith, love of gospel music, and a glass of grapefruit juice and rum — preferably of the darker variety.

Surrounded by five generations of those adoring nieces and nephews — Ashley did not have children of her own — and wearing a sparkling dress of her favorite color blue along with a feather head dress that made her look flapper-esque, Ashley celebrated her special day Tuesday afternoon with lots of love of family and a proclamation read by Mayor Toni Harp.

The gathering took place in her apartment at Monterey Homes in Dixwell.

Ashley has spent 63 of her 100 years in New Haven, where she has helped raise a handful of nieces and nephews, along with great nieces and nephews.

Harp noted Ashley’s longevity as a professional caregiver: She worked decades as a nurse’s aide while raising many of her nieces and nephews. The mayor pronounced Ashley ​“a special citizen of exceptional resilience.”

About 40 relatives and friends gathered to mark the occasion in the brightly decorated community room at Monterey’s Webster Street seniors facility, where the honoree has been living for 17 years.

Like many members of the far-flung family, great-great niece Fallon Tindal came up from Sumter, S.C., for the celebration. She called her great-great aunt ​“a blessing.”

Turning 100 is a notable achievement. Remaining not only sharp, without sight or hearing or mobility problems or any of the common deficits of aging — as Ashley has — is remarkable. Add to that a personality who, in Tindal’s words, ​“tells it like it is and means what she says,” and you get a family matriarch.

“When she comes to visit me at my house [and enters the kitchen], she says, ​‘Get out of the way,’” TIndal recalled.

This past Friday night, the family threw another party at which the birthday ​“girl,” having had one of her rum and grapefruit juice elixirs, was videotaped dancing about the room. Several people at Tuesday’s party took out their phones and showed the evidence.

Ashley is the tenth of 13 children. If she has a regret, she said it is that she’s the last of her large crew of siblings. She followed her older sister Clara to New Haven, where the sister got married. Ashley got her first job working for one of the small family doctors on Dixwell Avenue. After that, it was stints doing factory work in town and up in North Haven, and then as a nurse’s aide for about 30 years.

When pressed why she came to New Haven, she revealed a secret: It was to get away from a man who was bothering her. She thought getting out of town would be a way to cool things off.

“I was only going to visit,” she said, 63 year later. And counting.

Great-nephew Tim Jones said he remembers most strongly the way that Ashley and her sister took care of their mother, Emma Sayles, who had also come to New Haven, when she was old. He now takes care of his own dad, William, with that spirit in mind.

Jones’s own mother died young, at age 33. He was only 6 years old at the time. His great aunts became the substitute mothers in his life, with a combination of love and discipline, he said. He called his great grandmother the progenitor of the family, ​“a deeply spiritual woman.”

Turning one hundred is wonderful, of course, but not as unusual as it used to be. According to the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut​‘s Jane Wisialowski, the most recent census, from 2010, show 929 people aged 100 or more in Fairfield, Hartford, Litchefield, Middlesex, New Haven, New London, Tolland, and Windham counties combined.

The number included 219 centenarians in New Haven alone. The agency gives an annual centenarian luncheon in the spring. Cora May Sayles-Ashley got an early start — she attended her first last May.