Dame Malvina Major sings for her 104-year-old friend
Not every woman is serenaded by a world-famous opera singer on her birthday, but then, not many women celebrate turning 104.
Jean Lewis, known to her family as Ginny, is having two parties this weekend, as befits attaining such a grand age.
Her good friend Dame Malvina Major played piano and sang three songs at a party yesterday for friends and family at Jean Sandel Village in New Plymouth, where both women live independently.
The morning tea eats included a cake she felt was too beautiful to cut into (two of her great grandsons helped blow out the candles), and plates of proper southern cheese rolls that were handed around.
Ginny’s friendship with Dame Malvina began when they were introduced through mutual friends.
“As we talked, we found we have a lot in common in our lives.”
Having both lived many years in Christchurch, they knew many of the same people and places, and also shared a love of music.
“Everybody loves her, and she’s been wonderful in helping me settle in, as I found it really hard,” Dame Malvina said.
“Some people have a way of reaching out and touching the lives of those they meet in a very special way. She has such a warm smile.”
Today Ginny will be the guest of honour at a large family lunch, with her daughter and all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren, and other family members who have travelled from around the country.
She feels amazing celebrating her birthday, she said.
“I never thought I’d make it.” As number eight in a family of 10 children, she credits her parents’ love and the good food she grew up with for her longevity, along with the love of family all her life, through good and bad times.
She grew up in Christchurch and trained as a teacher, then in 1941 got her first job as sole charge teacher of 24 students at the school at Lake Coleridge village, which was New Zealand’s first hydro-electric project.
“I’ve kept in touch with some of the children I taught,” she said.
Those “children” are now in their 80s, and she had already had birthday wishes from one of them.
“I was 21 when I went there and was there for four years, during the war. It was a wonderful place.”
In 1996 the school was closed, but she and her students organised a reunion, and from there, a book.
“It was my idea, and it’s a beautiful book.
‘‘Some people have a way of reaching out and touching the lives of those they meet in a very special way. She has such a warm smile.” Dame Malvina Major
“We formed a committee and it took us four years of research and interviews.”
They also fundraised $100,000 to pay for the book.
She counts her involvement in Lake Coleridge: the Power, the People, the Land, written by Rosemary Britten and published in 2000, as one of her greatest achievements, after her family.
“The most important things in my life have always been my family, my parents, brothers and sisters.
“All of us remained best friends throughout our entire lives, not just my brothers and sisters but their wives and husbands as well, we all got on really well.”
That friendship has passed down the generations, and she is pleased to see the strong bonds between her children, grandchildren and now the next generation.
Ginny was 18 when she met her first husband, Gilbert, who enlisted when World War II broke out.
The day he sailed off to war, he and some of his fellow soldiers sang “I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair” from the deck of the ship as she stood on the wharf with her father and sister, Kathleen, who was serenaded with “I’ll take you home again, Kathleen”.
“Imagine that echoing around Lyttelton Harbour – it was magic.”
On his return, on Christmas Day, 1945, the train carrying the troops stopped in Christchurch, and she got into the crowded carriage and travelled to Timaru with Gilbert.
“Here was me, in the middle of all these returned servicemen crowding around wanting to be introduced to this girl whose photo they had seen while they were in Italy and France,” she said.
Gilbert had carried her picture with him the whole time he was away.
They were married about a year later, and moved into a flat in Timaru, where she continued teaching until the arrival of their daughter, Margaret.
But just 17 months later, Gilbert died suddenly of a heart attack.
The widow’s pension was not enough to cover the rent, she said, so in 1948 she returned to teaching, while a friend cared for Margaret.
A few years later, she remarried and moved to Waimate, where her daughter Annette was born, and she returned to work as a relief teacher when Annette was eight years old.
When a new school opened, she was asked to apply for the senior teacher, junior classes role, and got it.
“It was exciting to be at the beginning of something,” she said.
In 1967, a visiting school inspector encouraged her to apply for work in Christchurch, and they moved back.
In those days, it was unusual for women who were married with children to return to full-time work, but Ginny loved teaching, and she continued her career until her retirement at 64.
After the Christchurch earthquakes, she moved with her daughter Annette and her husband John to Upper Hutt.
Later, they moved to Whanganui where John was head of the art department at Whanganui Collegiate.
After he died three years ago, they decided to move to New Plymouth to be closer to one of her eldest grandsons and his family.
“It was a big challenge, but I’ve settled in very happily here.”