WHNR celebrate two residents turning 100
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By Carmen Ensinger
Submitted photo
Birthday ladies Pat Holmes and Marjorie Breckon, front row, along with Kendra Wallace and Abby Chavez from the Activity Department at White Hall Nursing and Rehab celebrate the ladies 100th birthday with a cake. Breckon celebrated her 100th birthday on Sept. 4 and Holmes on Sept. 20.
There are many milestone birthdays in one’s life. There is, of course, the first birthday. The sixteenth birthday when one gets the coveted driver’s license. The fortieth birthday, when all of a sudden one doesn’t feel young anymore and the sixty-fifth birthday when good old Medicare kicks in – sometimes at an earlier age.
Then, if one is lucky, there comes the seventieth and eightieth. Thereafter, pretty much every birthday is looked upon as a gift. But the true milestone in anyone’s life is to reach the 100 mark and two ladies at White Hall Nursing and Rehab have done just that during the month of September.
Marjorie Breckon, originally from Jacksonville, was born on Sept. 4, 1924 and Pat Holmes, from White Hall, was born on Sept. 20, 1924.
The year these two ladies were born Paris hosted the Summer Olympics. Diners in fancy eateries could dine on a new creation – the Caesar salad. For those with a sweet tooth, there was a new candy on the market in 1924 called Bit-O-Honey, introduced by the Schutter-Johnson Company of Chicago.
Dum Dum suckers were also introduced as well as Iodized table salt, Kleenex facial tissues, locking pliers and Marlboro cigarettes, which no doubt contributed to reducing the number of those reaching the century mark.
One known fact about 1924 was that it was certainly a cheaper time to live. A gallon of milk cost a mere 28 cents; a dozen eggs, 25 cents; the average house price was between $2,500 and $3,000 and the cost of an automobile ranged from $109 to $264. Gas cost between 13 to 25 cents per gallon and the country only had 48 states at the time. On a more celebratory note, the very first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was held.
Looking to the stars, the spiral nebula Andromeda was discovered in 1924, proving for the first time that our own Milky Way was but one of many galaxies in the vast universe.
But as great as these events and inventions are, they probably don’t compare to the birth of these two ladies to their parents at the time.
Each went on to make their mark in the world over many decades before finding respite in White Hall Nursing and Rehab.
Bobbi Pratt, Regional Director of Admissions and Census Development at Tara Cares, the parent company of White Hall Nursing and Rehab, was tasked with asking the ladies what their favorite memory from the past was.
“Pat (Holmes) spent some of her younger years growing up in Chicago, but her family relocated to White Hall while she was still a young girl,” Pratt said. “She is well known in the community for her ownership of Holmes Grocery Store. She says her favorite memory (besides the birth of her daughter) is the opening of her store.”
Pratt says Breckon has dementia and wasn’t able to give a lot of information.
“Marjorie was a housewife and found contentment in her family and working on the family farm,” Pratt said. “She is from Jacksonville and always cherished the car rides with her son.”
