Single & happy at 100
Nancy Croce is a trendsetter although she doesn’t think of herself that way.
It was many years ago while she was working in an accounting office for the City of Providence, a job she had held for 16 years, when a male fellow employee with less experience and tenure was given a promotion and a fat raise. Nancy wanted to know why she hadn’t been considered for the job. When she failed to get a satisfactory answer, she handed in her resignation. Her boss urged her to reconsider, but she stuck to her guns. The pleas for her to return increased and were finally accompanied with handsome pay increase.
Nancy took the money and returned to her job, staying another 14 years before leaving to work for Fatima Hospital.
The story was one of many shared Thursday afternoon as Nancy’s friends and co-tenants of Sparrows Point 1 apartments gathered to celebrate her 100th birthday. At the place of honor at the head table, wearing a yellow cardigan over a bright print dress and her hair fixed perfectly, Nancy spent more time greeting her admirers than eating. It suited her just fine.
She listened approvingly as her niece Mary Joyce told how Nancy’s parents come to this country from Panni, Italy and her father was a barrel maker, farmer and wine maker. Nancy was the youngest of nine children.
“You don’t like to be 100 years old without being strong minded. Aunt Nancy is one of the most determined and resilient people I’ve ever met. She has never let adversity get her down.”
Mary Joyce went on to relate how Nancy survived the great pandemic of 1919 and years later a ruptured appendix.
Nancy has no regrets that she never married. She has always enjoyed reading and doing crossword puzzles and is known to tenants at Sparrows Point as playing a mean hand of Hi-Lo Jack. In her lifetime, Nancy has done a lot of traveling and claims to have seen just about everything in this country including Hawaii and Alaska.
“This country, not Europe,” she emphasizes.
Serenity Hoskins, who has helped Nancy as a companion for the past several years remarked on Nancy’s traveling in a poem she read at the luncheon. Hoskins recounted how on graduating from Central High School, Nancy’s father nixed her plan to become a nurse. She went to work at Rhode Island Supply at 35 cents an hour and then during World War II went to work in the shipyard where she was introduced to one of the first business machines made by IBM. That experience put her on the path to her job with the City of Providence.
Hoskins gleaned Nancy’s story from countless conversations, jotting down notes to piece it all together into verse. Hoskins suspects if Nancy knew what she was doing she would have clamed up, shunning the attention.
She also revealed a few of Nancy’s habits.
“Nancy loves to drink chardonnay and occasionally beer/and going out for breakfast or lunch she does cheer.”
Nancy laughs about the wine.
“I can’t go to bed without that,” she says. A single glass is all she cares for. It fits her philosophy.
“I enjoy everything but not too much of anything,” she says.
And are there more secrets to a long life?
“Stay single. It helps, you know,” she said.
When it came time for the cake, Nancy joined in helping light the candles. Family members and friends captured the moment on their cell phones. With the candles aglow, Nancy stepped back as everyone sang happy birthday.
“Well, blow them out,” came the chorus.
Nancy didn’t hesitate. She took a deep breath and then looked up from the smoke to acknowledge the many cheers.
