'I Keep Busy': Manchester Woman Shares Secrets On 100th Birthday

MANCHESTER, NJ — Every morning, Mary DeLuise gets up, puts on her coat and goes outside to sweep her porch and stairs. Then she cleans the inside of her home, vacuuming and dusting, making sure everything is gleaming.

"I like a clean place," Mary said Tuesday as she celebrated her 100th birthday. "I like to keep busy."

Keeping busy is what has allowed her to keep living in her home by herself, said Barbara Ross, a certified home health aide who comes to Mary's home daily to check in on her.

"I don't take anything. I take vitamins," she said.

"She makes her own breakfast every day," Ross said. "She stays active."

"I can't sit on the couch and watch TV all day," Mary said.

Her birthday celebration was quiet — as so many celebrations have been because of the coronavirus pandemic. Mary has survived most of her family; her oldest son, Billy, lives in Florida with his wife but is ill and cannot travel. Two nieces live in New York and were unable to come visit due to concerns about the virus.

Ross was determined to make Mary's day special, however. She and her supervisors at Mango Home Health Agency in Toms River, and Faithanne Lawrence, another home health aide who has taken care of Mary, brought chocolate cake with white icing and pink trim, big pink "100" numeral balloons, and presented Mary with a pink crown festooned with shiny stones and the number 100.

Birthday cards, including one from her son and his wife, adorned the top of the TV, and a next-door neighbor, also named Mary, stopped by to wish her friend a happy birthday, eliciting a joyful smile and a scolding, as the neighbor has health issues of her own.

"I would have come to see you," she said, as she urged her friend to sit.

Time has taken a toll on some of Mary's memories. Names were tough for her to recall, but she had stories to share from her life, both good and bad.

She was born in New York to Patrick and Sabina, and had four sisters and a brother. She later moved in with her grandparents, who owned a farm, after her father died while she was young.

"We lived in one of those homes with the tall stairs," Mary said. Her grandmother was standing at the bottom, saying goodbye after a visit, and Mary said she was standing at the top, crying because she didn't want her grandmother to leave. She said she was so upset she ended up falling down the stairs, and went to live with her grandparents soon after.

Her grandparents had two sons who lived with them, and one was a music teacher who insisted on trying to teach her how to play the violin.

"I had no interest," she said. Finally, he locked Mary in a room with the music stand, music and a violin to try to force her to play.

"I jumped out the window. I was a b----," she said with a laugh and an impish smile.

Mary said she was married three times, the first time at 15 years old. She and her first husband had three children, sons Billy and Bobby, and a daughter, Janey. It was a hard life, she said, because her husband was an alcoholic.

"He would spend his whole paycheck before he got home," she said, so she essentially raised the children on her own, working as a waitress and also working in a doughnut shop. "We were married quite a while," she said, "too long."

Her second marriage was brief, and ended in tragedy.

"He was a gentleman, a quiet guy," she said. One day as his work day ended, he was standing with co-workers talking. "He tossed his keys to one of the guys, and dropped dead," Mary said matter-of-factly. He was 40 years old.

Mary and her second husband lived in big house in New York with several relatives, including her second husband's father, who was a doctor at Bellevue. It was an arrangement that continued after her husband's death, and she spoke fondly of the father. "He always wanted to pay me for letting him live with us," Mary said. "I told him no, but he'd leave the money on the bureau for me."

She later married a third time, and it was with her third husband that she moved to Manchester. Her third husband died when he was 60, she said. In addition, her younger son and her daughter have died as well.

"The men were really after me," she said with a laugh, then added that their pursuit of her wasn't usually with honorable intentions.

That's one reason she keeps so busy, she said. "There's no time to think about the bad things."

"I get lonesome sometimes," said Mary, who has lived in Manchester for 30 years. She looks forward to Sundays, where she makes a fresh batch of gravy to have during the week over macaroni. She talks with Ross often, and with her nieces from time to time.

But she was proud of how long she has lived, which she attributed in part to being content with simple things.

"I've had a good life," Mary said.

Click here to get Patch email notifications, or download our app to have breaking news alerts sent right to your phone. Have a news tip? Email karen.wall@patch.com Follow Manchester Patch on Facebook.