Woman turns 104: ‘The main thing in life is to help each other’

Vera Veale is all dressed up in her furry black jacket and hangs on to her beaded clutch bag, which is resting on her lap. She is all set, her white, shoulder length hair neatly brushed, to celebrate her 104th birthday with her relatives that span across five generations. The way she sees it, the secret to living a long life rests in hard work, tackling life’s problems one at a time and the occasional tot of whisky before bed. “I don’t have whisky every single day… but when I think of it in the evening,” she smiles. Although she can no longer walk, and has trouble hearing, her memory is lucid as she recalls the day she met her late husband, Percy, in a chapel in the UK. “We used to belong to different things going on at the chapel. We met there. After that we kept meeting there until we were married,” she said. The couple had a daughter, Elizabeth. A few years later, her husband, a soldier, was killed in action during World War II. The young widow had to raise her daughter alone and found a job doing secretarial work. Her daughter recounted how, when the time came for her to retire, she started working at a factory supervising other girls. Ms Veale feels that this work, coupled...