By CHIARA CANZI Palisadian-Post Intern It was a clear, crispy night as I approached a home in the upper Riviera neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. I was assigned to meet and profile a woman who will soon turn 100, and I was excited for the opportunity to talk to somebody who had lived through nearly all the important events of the 20th century. When I entered the room, Margaret Kelly was sitting on the sofa sipping a sweet, pinkish wine. ‘This is my favorite time of day,’ she said with a giggle. That smile reminded me about my own grandmother, Pierina, back home in Milan, Italy. At 96, she too is planning on becoming a centenarian. I used to love sitting on her lap, listening to her stories. Margaret’s daughter Peggy ushered me in to meet her mother, and clearly there’s a special bond between them. Margaret, who is 99 until December 16, has been living with her daughter for a few years because of severe arthritis. Margaret’s story begins in Brownsville, Oregon, where she was raised on a farm with a sister, Anna, and two brothers, Jack and Dan. ‘The farmhouse is still there,’ says Peggy, pushing the DVD player’s play button. ‘That’s your daddy’s farm, right Mom?’ Margaret nods. Peggy is playing a homemade video for me that tells her mother’s life story. ‘I took old pictures and put it together,’ she says. ‘It’s so nice to watch it again and again.’ Old black-and-white pictures of a far different time scroll on the screen. In every picture Margaret looks happy and surrounded by family. Her parents, Denis and Delia Lane, were proud Irish immigrants with strong Catholic family values. Margaret was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, where she got all A’s and B’s, except in deportment. ‘You liked to talk, Mom,’ Peggy says. Margaret nods and laughs loudly. ‘Yes, I sure did!’ After the death of her father in 1925, Margaret and her mother sold the farm and moved to Los Angeles to be closer to her older brothers. She was 18. On the screen now, we see a young Margaret, a stylish fashionista–pigtails, peasant blouses accented by leather gloves. She looked incredible. I share this thought and Peggy agrees. ‘My mother has always been a very cool person. During Prohibition, she and her friends were caught single-handedly carrying flasks into restaurants. They would order Seven-Up and mix it with you know what.’ Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, Margaret found a job downtown at Western Union, where she earned 50 cents an hour and worked in the same office for the next 20 years. ‘Downtown was so different back then,’ she says. ‘I remember going to work on an electric streetcar. There weren’t that many people there, so there was no traffic. Imagine that!’ In 1932, Margaret married Jim Kelly and, she says, ‘I proceeded, as a good Irish Catholic, to have five children.’ Despite the Depression, the Kellys were able to move into a house in Huntington Park and both kept working. Jim Kelly was an accountant, and he soon started his own business downtown. ‘Those were happy times,’ Margaret says with a sigh, tipping the glass with her polished nails. She remembers moving to Sherman Oaks in 1939 and buying a house for $1,700. She lived there and in a second home until 2004, when she moved in with her daughter. When Jim Kelly died of a heart attack in 1951, he left five children in the care of their mother. ‘We had tough times,’ says Peggy, ‘ but we were a happy family.’ Dad left the family a little money from his accounting enterprise, but Margaret had to supplement it with a job at the California Electric Service in Van Nuys. She worked there for 30 years, before retiring at 77. Even now, on the sofa, this 99-year-old woman glows. She is strong. She has that particular vitality that radiates through her fragile limbs. Her life has not been ordinary; she had to overcome setbacks that defined the woman she is now. But she never once forgot to have fun. Legend has it that one night, at one of her favorite hangouts in the San Fernando Valley’the Tail of the Cock’Margaret arrived early and was waiting for her friends at the bar. A guy sitting next to her made a rude comment about her, and the bartender jumped the counter, made the man apologize and asked him to leave. In 1949, Margaret and many of her friends were founding members of St. Cyril’s Catholic Church in Encino. Here, they enjoyed gathering for fundraisers–and the additional martini. They now call themselves the HBs (‘Has Beens’), and still meet for lunch whenever they can. When Margaret retired at 77, she took up bowling with her church group. She and her teammates played in a league once a week and called themselves the SOBs (for ‘Sherman Oaks Beauties’). The sport became Margaret’s lasting love. When she was 91, she was featured in L.A. Senior Life magazine as the oldest bowler in the area. She bowled until the age of 96, when her knees asked her to stop, but even then, her average score was close to 100. ‘She was and still is a very social person,’ Peggy says. ‘People love talking to her, she is so full of life.’ As we visited, Margaret caught a glimpse of the invitation for her 100th birthday party. ‘That’s for me? 100? It can’t be true! I don’t feel old!’ She never grows old, she says. It’s in her genes and in her spirit. With almost a century behind her, Margaret has a suggestion for all youngsters out there: ‘Get along with people, be yourself and have a glass of wine every night!’ She plays gin every evening with her daughter, a stockbroker, who says, ‘I have to tell you, she always wins. The other night I asked her why she wins all the time, and she said, ”It’s not my fault you’re not as smart as I am.’ Can you believe that?’ Both women embrace in a good laugh. My thoughts go back to my grandmother, who did not, however, have the same average in bowling. I think she never bowled in her life, actually, but she, like Margaret, is a product of a different time. For that they are strong, independent women. And for those of you math wiz’s, here are some numbers: Margaret has 32 descendants: five children, 12 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. They will all be gathering here this Saturday along with many friends for the big birthday bash. Daughter Peggy plans to toast her mother with an old Irish proverb: ‘May you live 100 years, and one extra year to repent.’ When I completed my interview and was outside, getting ready to leave, Peggy showed me Margaret’s vintage dark-blue 1967 Mustang that she drove until she was 95. Even in her 80s, Margaret told an earlier interviewer, whenever she was stopped at a signal and a guy would pull up next to her in a sports car, she enjoyed showing him who was boss. ‘The other driver would see this gray-haired lady behind the wheel,’ Margaret said, ‘but I would look at him, then just step on the gas and leave him in the dust.’
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