Turning 100, despite what the doctors said

Doctors once said a heart condition would kill Annette Vardy by age 21, but she has defied the odds, celebrating her 100th birthday on Thursday.  

The guest of honour walked through the crowd at her party, flanked by silver-haired ladies half her age, their arms linked together, helping her along, their steps slow. 

Vardy is supposed to walk with a cane, but doesn't.

"I don't want people to think I'm old," she said. 

Now a centenarian, the petite woman everyone calls "Nete" has that twinkle of wisdom in her eye and a spark of sassiness in her smile. 

'When a young person is not expected to live until they're 21, and they live to be 100, that's something to be thankful for, isn't it?- Mary Vardy

She knows how to get a laugh from the crowd gathered to celebrate her big birthday, and her life, at the Salvation Army church in Mount Pearl.

"I have my bags packed," she said, speaking into the microphone. "I'm all ready to go, but I am not in a hurry."

Love and war

CBC News first told Vardy's incredible life story last year — a tale of true love thwarted by war — followed by decades of service to others.

She was engaged in her 20s, and her fiancé died on his way home from the Second World War, not from the war but of a heart attack after saving people from a boating accident in Ontario.

• Put a ring on it: 99-year-old finds new owner for WW II engagement rings

For 80 years, she kept the wedding and engagement rings he used to propose before passing them on in September to a woman who married Vardy's cousin, in a ceremony she officiated.

Mary Vardy, wearing those rings, was one of the birthday party guests who helped Vardy blow out her candles.

Vardy, who recently moved from Clarenville to St. John's, feels she lived a full life, not measured by time, but by deeds.

She travelled the world as a missionary with the Salvation Army, spending 30 years working as a nurse in a children's hospital in India, every day witnessing extreme poverty and starvation, scenes so heartbreaking, the memories still bring tears to her eyes.

"A little girl, she must have been about eight years old, but she she looked like a four year old, pushing her father in a homemade cart, crying out, 'I'm hungry, I'm hungry.' And even now, it hurts," she remembered.

"Some people get so used to it, they step over it, I never did."

Vardy did what she could. She helped heal the sick and feed children on the street. She unofficially adopted a three-month-old orphan girl named Leela, whom she raised and put through university. Leela is now married with three children of her own.

"Her first word to me was 'Mommy.' Of course, I have a heart that's very weak ... from that day on, she was my girl." 

Defying the odds

Vardy was born with a weak heart, a medical condition doctors said would kill her at a young age. 

"When a young person is not expected to live until they're 21, and they live to be 100, that's something to be thankful for, isn't it?"
  
She lived in defiance of that prognosis, and proved to everyone just how strong, and big her heart really is.

"You don't have to go to India to help people, we have them all around us here. We don't have to go across the street to help somebody."

With a century of life now behind her, Vardy has no fear of what lies ahead.

"I'm ready to go, I can go anytime. Whether it's tonight, it's ok. If it's five years from now, it's ok."

But she sure seems to have a lot of life left in her yet.