A Good Age: Mary Warren, Irish mom, school cafeteria cook, celebrates 100 years

QUINCY − Beaming, Mary McCarthy Warren was in her element.

She'd been waiting for this day for months. Turning 100 meant that she would see family and friends who had traveled across the ocean and across the country, coming from South Africa, Ireland, Florida, California and throughout New England, to celebrate her long life.

"So what are we doing on my birthday?" she began asking weeks ago.

On Saturday, March 18, at The Common Market in Quincy, 85 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews and friends gathered to greet and hug her and recall old times.

She has six living children, 12 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren, with another expected in July.

"She has always been active," her oldest child, Mary Georgas, who lives in South Africa, observed. "She is always doing something and she uses WhatsApp to text to her grandchildren. She takes each day as it is and she feels blessed."

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Born at home in South Boston on March 18, 1923, she seems like the kind of woman some may remember from their youth, in their own family or a friend's, at school or as a neighbor.

While her husband, Andrew, a Boston police officer and landscaper, worked long hours at two or three jobs, she raised their seven children on Lenoxdale Avenue in Dorchester in St. Brendan's Parish. They each had their roles and if she felt differently than he did, she would defer to him if he felt strongly.

Caring and competent, she ruled the house "with an iron fist," keeping order out of chaos, her children recalled.

"She had the seven kids and it wasn't a big house and you could get in fights with your siblings about just bathrooms," her son Andrew Warren, of Norfolk, recalled. "You didn't fool around with her, but she was very fair. You couldn't ask for a better mother. She was a caring, loving mother and you can see the attention that she is getting back now.

"The fact that she is as good as she is is such a blessing. She beats us regularly at 500 Rummy."

"I love to cook," Mary Warren said in an interview a few days before her birthday. Her parents, immigrants from County Kerry, Ireland, had a restaurant in Dorchester. Once her children were old enough, she went to work as a cook and then manager of the cafeteria at Dorchester High School, staying 20 years.

"She had a handful," her daughter Mary Georgas said. "Even today, we look back and say, 'How did she do it?' She'd be up and off to work before some of us were on our way to school. We'd come down to breakfast and on the stove would be the pot of oatmeal.

"And with seven of us bringing lunch to public school, the night before she'd be laying the sandwiches out on the table; all the guys had triple-deckers. At 3 p.m., she'd come home from school and start preparing dinner for us. Sunday was baking time, cupcakes for the week, and always a piece of fruit when we would open our lunchboxes. A balanced dinner every night and we all had our jobs, peeling potatoes for nine of us."

Mary Warren lives in her own apartment at Union Towers, at 95 Broad St., in Weymouth, where she still cooks occasionally. She recently asked her daughter Ann Marie Buckley, of Hingham, to get her some salmon. She has lived there since 1999, on the eighth floor with a good view, and uses a rollator walker to get around now so she can safely do things for herself.

She no longer plays golf or swims but enjoys reading light novels, playing cards and spending time with her family.

The first in her family to reach 100, she is the only survivor of seven siblings and had a twin sister, Nora (Nonie), who lived in Dorchester. As a child, Warren learned to swim at Carson Beach in South Boston, graduated from South Boston High School in 1942, and worked as a clerk at the Charlestown Navy Yard during World War II.

She was at a dance in Boston and heard about jobs with the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. She applied and worked as a cashier and waitress in the grill car, traveling to New York.

"That was a fun job," she said.

One day in 1942, she was walking on Boston Common with friends when she met a handsome sailor named Andrew Warren from Pennsylvania. He soon proposed to her, again on Boston Common, but she wanted to wait until after she was 21. They wrote to one another and were married in 1946. They had seven children and in 1953 moved to Dorchester.

In 1983, after they had retired, they lived in Dennis Port on Cape Cod and spent winters in Florida. They enjoyed traveling; she has been to South Africa, Zambia, Botswana and Ireland. Then her husband died at age 73 of stomach cancer.

"She kept going," Mary Georgas said. "When my dad passed away, we were worried. She just kept moving. She is always doing something."

Her granddaughter Rachel Adams, 33, of Braintree, a nurse practitioner, contacted The Patriot Ledger about "helping let the world know of this amazing woman and her fantastic life!"

Ruth Lydon, of Braintree, Warren's daughter and Adams' mother, said, "She was great with newborns and babies and had this wonderful swing on the front porch."

Warren drove until she was 92 and has enjoyed good health. Her main health issue is macular degeneration in both eyes, for which she receives injections.

"I don't understand why I'm the only one left," Warren said about her centenarian status.

"I was always on the go," she said, and her advice is to "keep moving and doing things."

At her party, she received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., who arranged for an American flag to be flown over the U.S. Capitol in her honor. That flag was also a gift to her at the party.

Weymouth Mayor Robert Hedlund sent a proclamation that March 18 was Mary E. Warren Day in Weymouth in recognition of her life and her birthday.

Massachusetts House Speaker Ron Mariano, D-Quincy, issued a House resolution in her honor and state Sen. Walter F. Timilty Jr., D-Milton, was at the party to present her with a Senate resolution.

Remembering another Warren

Paul Warren, a personable, talented musician who played trumpet and coronet with the seniors band the Whipple Snappers at the Whipple Senior Center in Weymouth until he was 94, died Feb. 23 at age 96. Warren (no relation to Mary Warren) was the director of music in Weymouth schools from 1961 to 1988 and some members of the band were his former students. He brought the magic in music to many and will be greatly missed.

Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@patriotledger.com.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: At 100, Mary Warren, of Weymouth, keeps cooking up something new daily