Ready to party: Tauranga's Willa Crews turns 105

Willa Crews surrounded by birthday cards celebrating her 105th birthday. Photo / Andrew Warner

The day Mabel Williamina Crews was born - August 17, 1914 - World War I's Battle of Tannenberg was beginning between German and Russian forces, thousands of kilometres away from her home on New Zealand's West Coast. She would live through that world war, and another - surviving polio and the Napier earthquake along the way - in a life touched by joy, tragedy and hard work. Today she turns 105, making her one of the Western Bay of Plenty's oldest people. Reporter Samantha Motion meets the cheery centenarian.
Mabel Williamina Crews is no stranger to a birthday photo.

Sitting pretty in the illumination of the photographer's lights yesterday, she grinned and waved, effortlessly modelling a spotty pointed birthday hat.

And no wonder. Celebrating her 105th birthday today, the cheery Tauranga woman has had more opportunities than most to practice the art of a birthday snapshot.

Known as Willa to one and all, she is the oldest resident of the Radius Matua rest home, which will host more than 30 people next weekend for her birthday party.

A big bash was an annual birthday tradition for Willa, who said she always enjoyed the company and was rather partial to a piece of cake.

This photograph of Willa Crews, front, was taken at a New Years Eve party in 2014 at Radius Matua. Photo / Supplied

She said the array of cards she had received from dignitaries was "magnificent".

Willa picked up a particularly posh card, complete with golden tassel, and bearing a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II in a fetching feathered blue hat.

"Ahh, there's Betty," said Willa.

The photograph was an improvement on last year's hatless card, she reckoned.

Willa recalled many memories from her long life in an interview with the Bay of Plenty Times yesterday.

She remembered sitting on the veranda giving a new neighbour a cup of tea when the Napier earthquake struck in 1931. The stove shook its way right out the door, she said.

And while a few of the details in some stories were not as easy to remember as they once were, Willa took it all in her stride.

"I'm trying to get this thing working," she said, tapping her forehead and chuckling.

Asked the secret to her long life, she said: "I really don't think there is one.

"Things will work out how they are going to work out."

Willa Crews, aged 2. Photo / Supplied

Born Clarice Mabel Beale in 1914, her mother changed her name to Williamina after her father, who was killed in a mining accident when she was 6, according to an interview she gave for a 2017 book about New Zealand's centenarians called Keepers of History.

She has lived in New Zealand all her life, growing up in Mosgiel then Napier.

Willa contracted polio when she was 3 and is believed to be the oldest survivor of the epidemic in New Zealand.

The disease left her with a partially paralysed leg and a weakened arm. She wears a leg brace each day.

She married Arthur Crews in 1936. She raised their two boys on her own when he was posted overseas at the beginning of World War I.

On his return from war, the pair opened a grocery store. She recalled it was closed on Mondays and the pair would often use the day to travel around New Zealand.

Arthur died some years ago. In her later years, Willa particularly enjoyed knitting and gardening.

She was a lifetime churchgoer, attending St Columba Presbyterian Church in Matua.

Klara Luxford Rulisek, a diversional therapist at Radius Matua, said Willa received many visitors from church and the Tauranga Gardening Club.

Centenarians in New Zealand

While there is little recent official data available on New Zealand's oldest people, the record is believed to be held by UK-born Florence Finch, who died in 2007 aged 113. Madelaine Anderson was reported to be the oldest born in New Zealand. She died last year aged 111.