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Feisty Archer’s Home resident turns 103
Celebrating her 103rd birth anniversary, on Friday, was the longest and
The centenarian: Ms. Celestine Shipley, munching on some bananas
obviously oldest resident of Archer’s Home, Celestine Shipley. Even at her age, Ms. Shipley was well polished, making sure she had sprayed perfume, and applied face powder, before making an appearance before the media, saying that she can’t look and smell old.
The centenarian giggled when she was teased about dressing up to please her boyfriend, rebuking the teasers and sharing with them that the “boyfriend ain’t know de wuk”.
The face of the visually impaired centenarian lit up when she heard the voices of her loved ones making jokes and extending to her, their heartfelt wishes.
Her granddaughter, Sandra Barker, said that though she knows not very much about the life her grandmother lived, she does know that she had always paid a keen interest into the lives of her family members and relatives.
“Even today she advises us. Or when I would visit she would ask me about everybody. Her memory is phenomenal” Barker said.
Reminiscing about when her granny was in her 80’s, Barker recalled Shipley walking from her home in Charlestown to theirs on Mandela Avenue, just to give them a couple of bananas, one of Ms. Shipley’s favourite eatables.
She was born and lived for a short while on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway, before moving to the city where she resided in Ketley Street, Charlestown.
Ms. Shipley had also resided in Barbados for a few years with her common law husband. The union bore three children, all of whom she outlived.
When her husband died, Ms. Shipley continued living in her Charlestown home alone. Her family said that it was her undying independence that prompted them to put her in a home, but by then she was already in her late nineties.
“She always wanted to do things for herself– cook, wash, everything. We were scared that she might harm herself, so we brought her here,” Barber explained.
It was only recently that Ms. Shipley stopped doing things for herself.
She is, however, still very feisty and jovial.
One of the stories that Ms. Barker said she will never forget being told by her grandmother, was of an accident many years ago when her grandmother was travelling in a steamer boat which capsized. She was saved by a young man, thus living to see the second century of her life. (Rehana Ashley Ahamad)
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