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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us November 25, 2005 Ruth Berera's 100th birthday is today. Still caring after all these years Ruth Berera turns 100 today, wrapping up another year of treating herself and those in need to good food By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings Every Wednesday, Ruth Berera brings a bag of cream-filled cookies to the Caring Friends Community Dinner at Pioneer Hall. She stacks them on a plate that attracts hungry hands between the line for dinner and the spot to pick up the paper cups of juice and milk Berera pours. The chocolate and vanilla cookies disappear by the end of the evening, but not because Berera nibbles on them. “I have never tasted them,” Berera said. “I only bring them because they love them for dessert.” She read “Eat to Stay Young” in a magazine a long time ago and the advice stuck — no Coca-Cola, no coffee, no cigarettes and no candy. She let go of her penchant for chocolate-covered cherries and, now, Berera credits her good health and long life, in large part, to the way she eats. Ruth Berera serves juice , milk and cookies the weekly Caring Friends dinner. The centenarian has volunteered there for more than a decade. Orville Hector | Ashland Daily Tidings “I don’t do it to live long,” she said. “I wanted to be healthy.” Berera turns 100 today and will celebrate her birthday at a party with friends and family Saturday. “I thought I was going to die when I was 70, like everyone else in my family,” said Berera, who moved to Ashland 30 years “because my brother’s three daughters lived here and I wanted to be by my nieces before I died. I never expected to live this long.” The daughter of an English father and a Czechoslovakian mother, Berera grew up in Hartford, Conn. She has seen two world wars, the Great Depression and the Civil Rights Movement, yet it’s the experiences she’s had through four marriages and two trips through Europe — and her diet — that she shares with others. Sara Watson, Berera’s 27-year-old great-great-niece, has looked to her aunt for sage wisdom and come away with a few tidbits. “Her main advice was just that diet,” said Watson, of Ashland. She calls her relative an “independent spirit,” a trait reflected in many aspects of Berera’s life. In times when women stayed home with children, Berera chose to work rather than raise a family. She and her “second Italian husband” divorced after he objected to her second month-long trip through Europe. Later, she told the priest at their Catholic church the separation had been her idea so her ex-husband would be allowed to remarry in the church. Berera continues to live alone in the Ashland apartment she has called home for two decades. Other than having friends drive her to the Caring Friends dinner, mass at Our Lady of the Mountain Catholic Church and on shopping trips, Berera does not need assistance. A century of loves Virginia King, another volunteer at the Caring Friends meal, sometimes stops by the apartment to see Berera. The pair sit in her living room with the TV on “and we talk about her past life and her various marriages,” King said. When remembering her life for others, Berera frames it around her two Italian husbands, her Native American-Dutch husband and her Mexican husband. Her first marriage — to her “first Italian husband” — didn’t last. He died shortly after they were married when he fell off a roof. She hadn’t wanted to marry her “second Italian husband,” but he convinced her. They were together for 30 years. “That was a very good marriage,” Berera said. When Berera won a second trip to Europe (she had traveled there two years prior) through her job at city hall, her husband said she couldn’t leave. She chose a month in Europe over him and the marriage ended. “Did you know I rode a camel in Morocco?” Berera said. “The camel got away from me and the man was yelling at the camel. It’s a wonder I didn’t fall off.” She was proposed to in Spain by a man she knew for one day, but turned him down because she wanted to return to the States. Her second husband had remarried to an Italian woman and Berera befriended his new wife. Years later, when she passed away, he asked Berera to marry him again. By that time, she had driven across the country to live in California and did not want to return to Connecticut. In California, she married her third husband, a Native American-Dutch veteran who was ill. He died less than a year after they wed. The marriage to her fourth husband, a Mexican, also only lasted about a year. After that, she chose not to marry again. She has been proposed to 13 times, including the four she accepted. “She’s always been really independent,” Watson said. “I think it’s amazing that she’s turning 100 and lives by herself.” About a decade ago, the priest at Our Lady of the Mountain told his congregation that a free meal for the needy in Ashland could use volunteers. Berera came down to help Marty Bryant at the Wednesday night Caring Friends meal. “Ruth, one day she just came in,” Bryant said. “She says it’s seven years. It’s been about 12. She cares and she’s been there every week religiously.” Berera serves drinks and cookies at the meal in Pioneer Hall. Over the years, she has become a fixture at the event. People respect her and have nicknamed her “grandma,” even though she never had children. “It’s a bright part of her day, her week,” King said. “She feels needed, and she is.” The dinners, church services and shopping trips serve as Berera’s social outings. At home, she dances to music in her house — she was a skilled tango dancer — and sometimes she sits behind the “little old Honda” that she keeps in the parking lot at her apartment. “I’ve lived an eventful life,” Berera said. “I can’t complain, but now it’s boring because I can’t drive anymore.” Staff writer Jennifer Squires can be reached at 482-3456 x 3019 or [email protected]. 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