Born on March 10, 1912 in the United Kingdom, Joan Edith Brennan died peacefully yesterday at the age of 110 years and four months after suffering from dementia.
Her son, Barry Brennan, said her secret to living a long and full life was to stay healthy and eat organic.
“Unbelievably, at the age of 107 she was still living independently in her tiny apartment growing her own vegetables. She would regularly take the bus to the mall to do her shopping and treat herself to a coffee and muffin,” said Brennan.
Brennan said she will be remembered for her independence, her caring and generous nature, and her strong personality.
“She was a very individual person who led her own way,” he said.
“Mom had reached the stage where she wasn’t living the kind of life she wanted. She was fiercely independent and never wanted to be in care.”
Joan’s parents lived through the Victorian era and her father, Henry William Lewis, was a sergeant in World War I.
The last time Joan saw her father was when she was only five years old.
“She had a vivid memory of him taking her and her older sister to the pantomime,” Brennan said.
Tragically, Sergeant Lewis died of his wounds on May 4, 1917, during the Battle of the Somme.
“Joan was probably one of the very last people in the world who could remember a soldier who died in World War I,” Brennan said.
Eight years later, Joan’s mother, Edith Mary Lewis, emigrated with Joan and her sister to Australia and then to New Zealand after coming under immense hardship as a war widow.
In New Zealand, Joan trained as a nurse for Karitane Hospitals, a set of six hospitals across the country set up by the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society to care for babies.
“[She] loved taking care of children,” Brennan said.
In 1934, Joan was on a trip on her way back to the UK to become a nanny when she met the ship’s radio operator, Thomas George Brennan.
The two married in 1937 and moved back to New Zealand, where they went on to serve the country during World War II as telegraph operators keeping watch from Portland Island Lighthouse in Hawkes Bay.
“Life on the island was hard and lonely at the time. After the war they moved to Auckland and settled in Campbells Bay, where they lived in the same house for 36 years until they moved to Selwyn Village in 1990,” says Brennan.
After the war, Joan worked as a cook for most of her life, and even after she retired, she often cooked for their rotating club, Brennan said.
Thomas died in 1998 at the age of 89. And now, 24 years later, Joan succeeds him.
The two had three children, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.