Lowell Sun (Massachusetts)
August 9, 2007 Thursday
101 years? Piece of cake
by By Rita Savard, [email protected]
CHELMSFORD — Red is Josephine Najarian’s color.
The color of passion, she says with a wink.
Today "Jo" turns 101. Her friends at the Chelmsford Senior Center
threw a party in her honor yesterday. Wearing a red dress, Jo laughed
as she talked about her first encounter with a cute delivery boy,
making the little things count, and her only reason for watching TV
(it has to do with something red, of course).
"She was pretty adventurous, especially for that time period," says
Jo’s daughter, Doris Diciero, 66.
Born on Aug. 9, 1906, in Bear River, Nova Scotia, Jo was the middle
child in a brood of 12. Her parents, Eva Mae and Freeman Brown Rice,
were passionate people, she laughs.
Jo was 12, still in sixth-grade when her father got the phone call.
Jo’s teenage cousin, Ruth Hutchinson, had tuberculosis. Jo didn’t
think twice about volunteering to take care of Ruth.
Ruth died from the illness. Then Jo’s aunt fell ill. So Jo stayed on,
took care of her for three years. She never did go back to school.
When her aunt died, Jo left her Canadian farming town for Boston. She
was 16.
She was living with her best friend, Claire Keough, in Newton when
the "whistler" walked into her life.
Haig Najarian was a delivery boy at the local market. Every day, he’d
show up at the girls’ apartment with bread, meat and potatoes. He’d
stroll right past Jo, and stock the refrigerator, whistling as he
worked.
"Very bold," Jo thought. "Who is this guy"
Haig was taken with her right away. He was Armenian. She was not. But
she agreed to go out on a date with him anyway.
They teased each other. He loved it when she wore hats. He called her
pin legs. It cracked her up.
Three years, and countless deliveries of meat and potatoes later, he
asked her to marry him. In 1935, the couple wed. They had three
children, George, Marian and Doris.
Family, love and laughter is Jo’s recipe for longevity.
"It’s about enjoying the simple things in life," Jo says.
Music was a big part of her life. She played the organ in a church
choir. She embraced Haig’s Armenian roots. At the end, she could cook
with the best of them. Stuffed cabbage. Rice pilaf. She gave Haig’s
sisters a run for their money.
One of her proudest achievements was purchasing land and building the
family home on Fisher Road. To move into a house and have it be all
hers, "that was something," she beams.
For years, she was self-employed, tailoring clothes inside her house.
Haig worked as a meat cutter.
Their jokes kept the house filled with laughter, kept each other
happy.
In 1989, Haig died of a heart attack. Jo stayed on in the house
alone, until moving in with Doris last September — a month after her
100 birthday.
Jo doesn’t care much for TV, except to watch Red Sox games. They’ve
got passion, she says. Mostly, you’ll find her keeping busy in the
places she loves: the kitchen, whipping up an Armenian dish, or the
garden, planting flowers.
"She knows no limitations," Doris says. "On a scale from 1 to 10, I’d
give her a 15 for spirit and independence."
Jo’s biggest regret is not continuing her education. Doris tells her
mom not to worry about it.
"When you live to be 101, your experience of life is your education,"
Doris says.
If life is a classroom, Doris says Jo is an exceptional teacher. She
knows about living passionately, still shares that knowledge with
everyone she comes in contact with.