Violet White celebrated her 100th birthday with daughters Noeline White (69), of Madrid, and Pauline Clifford (60), of Kaikoura, and fellow residents of Radius Fulton Care Centre in South Dunedin yesterday.
But yesterday's celebration was just a warm-up for today.
Son Laurie White (72), of Dunedin, said 31 family members, including two of her five grandchildren, would descend on Dunedin to mark the occasion. Mrs White (nee Johnston) was born in Dunedin and, apart from some school years in Waipiata, lived most of her life in the city.
She married James White, a railway bus mechanic, in 1939. He died in 1987 at the age of 72.
Mrs White continued living in their Mornington home before moving to Radius Fulton Care Centre last year.
A daily walk up Lawrence St to the Mornington shops had kept her in good health and reading the newspaper daily had kept her mind sharp.
Mrs Clifford said her grandmother, Isabella Johnston, had died in her early 90s.
While the three siblings were in the South they visited sites where their forebears settled, including Stewart Island, where ancestor whaling captain James Joss lived after he emigrated from Scotland in the early 1800s, Mrs Clifford said.
