Right attitude key to a long life

TAKE ESTELLE Henry's advice and "stop worrying about it" and you too may receive a 100th birthday card from the Queen.

Mrs Henry, the popular New Brighton figure who now resides in Shirley's Woodchester Rest Home, celebrated her 100th birthday on Wednesday.

Her secret to a long and healthy life, she says, is to "stop worrying and don't let things upset you".

Mrs Henry and her late husband Harold once owned a grocery store on Seaview Rd in the 1940s, next door to the former Roxy Theatre.

The pair dedicated their lives to helping the New Brighton and Bexley communities, with Mr Henry often acting as the MC for community events.

Such was his dedication that Bexley's Harold Henry park on Wairoa St was named after him.

Mrs Henry has many fond memories of living and working in the suburb and remembers how "good" the people were, and remembers attending charity events at the last minute when "we would finish up at the shop and away we'd go and party the night away and come home when the sun was up".

Although she is now a centenarian, Mrs Henry shuns dowdy clothes in favour of high heels and pearl earrings.

Former neighbour Lorna Tonkin said Mrs Henry is always "beautifully dressed".

Mrs Henry said that at her birthday party, held last weekend, her relatives were talking "about my red high-heeled shoes and I thought I might buy another pair and have them put out on show".

"You knew it was me when you saw the red shoes," she said.