Published in Senior Digest on May 2006

A life long resident of this community, Blanche Dugas remembers the happy memories of raising her three children in a home on 12^th Street, right across from Capon Park.

Dugas, who now resides at Canterbury Woods, an assisted living facility at 100 Garfield Ave., said raising her family with a loving husband was the most important accomplishments in her life.

The 101-year old woman said her old neighborhood was a great place for her children to grow up. “I would send them to the park with a lunch,” she said, shrugging her shoulders with the realization that the world today is not the world she grew up in. “You never worried about your children being picked up by strangers,” she said.

She would start her mornings off by taking to her mother who just happened to have a kitchen window facing her.  You guessed it – Blanche built her house right next to her parents lot.

She fondly talked about her husband, who was 83 when he passed on in the early 1980s with dementia. “We were very close,” she said, adding how pleased she was that she married “such a good guy.”

Now Blanche reflects on her days before she got married at the ripe old age of 22.  During their  nine-month courtship, Phillip Dugas would drive his Model T more than 35 miles, from Putnam, Conn., to her house to visit on Thursday and Sundays. Blanch would marry this young man, the one who she met at Ocean Grove in Swansea. With a good reputation for cutting meat, her husband opened a small grocery store in this city’s Dodgeville section. His reputation brought in customers, allowing the store to thrive for 50 years.

Blanche is proud to be the oldest person in St. Joseph’s parish. When she turned 100 she reeied a medallion, which she wears all the time, from the bishop of Fall River, along with a citation President and Laura Bush recognizing her milestone age, too.

“God has been great to me,” she says, noting that he has left her with her “thinking, hearing, and eyesight.” “What else do you need to live,” she says jokingly. She ties her longevity to living a good, clean life.

“They tell me that there must be a reason for me living such a long life. I pray a lot for the residents of the assisted living facility and for then families,” Blanche said.

However, she is not a stranger to the power of prayer. A priest once told her that if you want to live a long healthy life, you should pray with your family.

“We did that in my family and also in my marriage,” Blanche said.