This reproduces what I posted today at my Substack pages: https://francesalut.substack.com/p/simone-at-103Just a short recognition of my wife's aunt SImone, 103 today and still lively, happy and alert by the sound of her voice during a bon anniversaire call from London to her French care home following her celebratory trip to a restaurant with relatives ...
On this day, January 30, in 1922, front pages in many countries reported the death of the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Michael Collins chaired the opening meeting of a committee drafting the constitution of the Irish Free State, a modest first step towards independence for 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties. The World Court, created by the League of Nations, held session for the first time in The Hague.
And in the lush French département of la Sarthe, Simone Legendre drew her first breath. Today, Tata Simone - aunt to Joëlle, my wife, great-aunt to our daughters - is 103. She’ll celebrate her birthday quietly with family in a care home at Sillé-le-Guillaume but was, until only a year ago, still living alone and mostly fending for herself in her bungalow in the nearby village of Mont-Saint-Jean.
Tata Simone is a redoubtable woman. Age may have weakened her body but her mind remains alert, her memory strong and her observations sharp.
Homes for the elderly are not always be the most uplifting of institutions, even when run with the professionalism and care I have witnessed in my visits to Simone, the most recent on New Year’s Day. But she seems happy, there are occasional family outings - she was up until close to midnight at her son Alain’s home on Christmas Eve - and is certainly the liveliest of the residents I have seen.
When she reached 100, Simone was still living at home. A delightful celebration was held in a little hall in her village and she was in fine spirits, her enjoyment stretching to a glass, very possibly two, of champagne.
Centenarian and niece: Tata Simone with Joëlle
Simone - sometimes Simonne depending on who in the family writes her name - is a farmer’s daughter and farmer’s widow. Her marriage to Louis produced four children (one, Françoise, sadly deceased), nine grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.
From 2022: the French did away with monarchs so no 100th birthday telegram
Louis was shipped off to work on farmland in Germany during the Nazi Occupation of France. Back home, he took pride in the apple-based eau de vie, a Sarthoise version of Calvados, that he produced on his farm.
On each of our visits, he’d hand me a litre bottle. I still have two or three, unopened, in the drinks cabinet. Tonton Louis’s eau de viewas powerful stuff, to be taken infrequently. I recall in my 20s allowing myself a small tot most evenings until I saw what it did when the tiniest of drops was spilled on a wooden mantelpiece.
If you look closely at the menus of past ceremonial feasts, you see that her name was given as Simone after her first Communion in 1933, but Simonne when she and Louis celebrated their golden wedding in 1996.
In whichever name, if my counts are right, she has lived through the terms of 18 US presidents, 23 British prime ministers and - excluding acting incumbents - 14 elected French presidents. As a French woman, she did not get the vote until 1944.
Simone recalls her youth as one of simple pleasures, regular trips to Coco plage on the lake of Sillé, accepting cigarettes from American soldiers after Liberation. At her home in Mont-Saint-Jean she kept her first wireless set, bought in the year of her marriage 1946, long after it stubbornly stopped working.
“I like a simple life,” she told her local paper on becoming a centenarian. “I preferred the old days. Life was harder but it was more beautiful.”
Bon anniversaire, Simone/Simonne, et bonne continuation.
The photos above were taken at Simone’s 100th birthday party. Below is a family group on New Year’s Day 2025. L-r: Martine (niece, Joëlle’s younger sister), Simone, Joëlle, Andre (Martine’s husband), me, Alain (Simone’s son).
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