Calais woman set to celebrate 107th birthday

CALAIS – Blanche Chevrier has lived through 19 presidencies, two world wars and the Great Depression.

She has watched as men walked on the moon, joined a nation that mourned the death of President John F. Kennedy, and made enough homemade pies to circle the Earth twice.

The former Eastport woman turns 107 on Sunday. With a glow in her eyes and slender, perfectly manicured fingers, painted pink for the birthday party, the petite Chevrier said she loves to dance and is looking for a partner.

“I would dance any dance if I had the chance,” she said with a chuckle.

She moved to Washington Place Assisted Living Center when she turned 100. She takes neither a nap nor medication. “Thank God, my health is fine,” she said.

She loves to play bingo.

On Friday, Sen. Kevin Raye, R-Perry, unveiled a legislative sentiment that will be presented to Chevrier on her birthday.

“Be it known to all that we the members of the Senate and House of Representatives join in recognizing Blanche Chevrier of Calais a long-time resident of Eastport and one of Maine’s oldest citizens,” the sentiment said. “Over the course of her extraordinary life she has borne witness to history from the waning years of the 19th Century to the early years of the 21st Century.”

Chevrier was born in Perry. Her parents, Seward and Susan Robinson, had seven children, a girl and six boys. Chevrier said her brothers spoiled her.

“They catered to me,” she said. “Anything I wanted I could get from them, and my father is the one that pampered me, much more than my mother did. She used to say, ‘Seward, you know you are spoiling her.'”

She was a toddler when the family moved to Eastport, where Chevrier’s father was the captain of a sardine boat.

Chevrier married Edmond Chevrier and had six children. Asked how long they had been married she said, “Oh, I don’t know, a hundred years.” He passed away several years ago.

She worked in the sardine factories, where she packed herring. “I could really put them in the can. Lots of weeks I made $100,” she said.

Chevrier also operated The Quoddy Cafe in Eastport. “You don’t know the pies I’ve baked. They’d go around this world two or three times,” she said. She said the cafe had a glass pie case that was popular with her customers.

“Those boats would come from Canada with a whole load of men in them and they’d come in there and clean that pie case right down – I felt like shooting them sometimes,” she said. “I’d have to go to work and make more pies.”

Three of her six children survive today. “I worked awful hard because I wanted my children to have everything,” she said.

Chevrier will be surrounded by family and friends when she celebrates her 107th birthday on Sunday.