Salads key to longevity

CENTENARIAN Marcella Wilton attributes her long life to eating a salad every day ? as recommended by Wanganui doctor Ulric Williams.
She turns 100 today, and expected to celebrate at the Home of Compassion with friends who were travelling from Wairarapa and Napier to be with her.
She said she'd never thought much about how long she would live.
"I always had good health. My mother was a very sensible woman. She gave us good food, and my father had an excellent vegetable garden."
Her mother was influenced by Dr Ulric Williams (1890-1972), who was a surgeon at Wanganui Hospital and then became a naturopath. He opened four Health Homes in the city, and healed chronically ill people who came from all over New Zealand.
Among other practices, he advocated a salad of raw vegetables every day.
Born Marcella Yates, Mrs Wilton has been a teacher, gardener, cook and mother.
In the town of her middle years, Masterton, her scones were much admired. An active member of the Catholic Women's League, she visited the sick and the old and took them food.
Her parents migrated to New Zealand from Australia around 1904, to escape the "everlasting sunshine" that had prevented them growing a crop of wheat for seven years running.
Marcella was born in Napier, in 1906. When she was about eight years old her father won a Wairarapa dairy farm in a ballot.
The farm, between Woodville and Pahiatua, had no house and needed to be broken in. He sent his wife and children back to Melbourne until he could get a house built.
They were prevented from returning by shipping strikes, and ended up staying there for a year.
Mrs Wilton remembered their return. They got off the Wellington train and were met by her father at Woodville. "Dad had a horse and cart, and apple boxes to sit on."
She then went to Ruawhata School, which had "some very fine teachers" and got a scholarship for her secondary education at Wellington Girls' College. After that she trained as a teacher.
Her first teaching job was at Whangamomona. She went on to teach at Pahiatua and Mangatainoka.
The Napier earthquake struck in 1931, while she was visiting a friend in that city.
"My room was surrounded by old-fashioned photographs and they were flapping."
She forgot everything she had been told about earthquake safety and jumped out the window, landing on the path along with another visitor from another room.
"The house was going jiggly, jiggly and the fowls in the fowl house were emitting strange shrieks."
Her hostess, who had been shopping in town, returned home with bleeding knees and elbows, but couldn't remember whether she got them from falling over or from the land jumping up and down.
In 1934 Marcella Yates married Charles Wilton, a motor mechanic. The first of their four sons, Ralph, was born that year.
The depression years and the World War 2 years that followed were hard.
"Money was scarce. For 20 years while we were being schooled she never bought an item of clothing," son Reginald said.
The family always had quarter acre sections, and grew as much of their own food as possible.
In 1942 they shifted to Masterton, where Mr Wilton became the manager of Wairarapa Farmers' Co-op Garage.
The boys grew up, and were adored by their Auntie Florence but regarded as bike riding "devils" by some of the neighbours. When they were grown, their mother taught for some more years at St Matthew's Primary School in Masterton.
Charles Wilton died in 1980 and his wife carried on her charity work and gardening, and was a great reader.
Her son Reginald, a Marist teaching brother, left the order and returned to Masterton to "keep an eye" on her. His mother was still mobile and cooking until 2000.
He taught in the town as well, until he got tired of modern ways and retired. After that they both moved to Sandy Bay, on the Mataikona road.
In 2004 they shifted again, to Wanganui. The attraction for Reginald Wilton was the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) based in the city.
"Since the Vatican Council the church has gone into radical modernism? I became disillusioned with the chattering," he said.
It was only in February this year that Mrs Wilton needed more care than her son could provide, and was moved into Wanganui's Home of Compassion.