Lucy grew up in T\u016btira, north of Napier. Her parents had met while working for Herbert Guthrie-Smith and soon married.<\/p>\n
She was the eldest of five, and her family lived in a two-bedroom house on land purchased from Guthrie-Smith.<\/p>\n
Being the eldest in a household short on space, Lucy was forced to sleep out on the house\u2019s porch year-round.<\/p>\n
She said her father would put chaff sacks over her in the winter to keep her warm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember we were pretty hard up on the farm then.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t have any curtains, just an open verandah.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I wasn\u2019t scared or frightened.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was 4 when the 1931 Napier earthquake hit.<\/p>\n
She recalls food and milk flying out of the cupboards in the kitchen and the family\u2019s wood fire toppling over.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it had fallen in, it would have burnt the house, but it fell out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lucy was so terrified after the earthquake, and slept in a tent under a plum tree for some time afterwards.<\/p>\n
Lucy Ashton at her Greenmeadows home.<\/p>\n
She attended Napier\u2019s Sacred Heart College. When she finished, war had broken out, so she worked on the family farm before meeting her husband Sydney Thomas Ashton, better known as Syd.<\/p>\n
The pair married, had six children and enjoyed life, with Syd working and Lucy at home looking after the children and homemaking, which loved.<\/p>\n
The only job Lucy ever had was teaching sewing at T\u016btira School, which earned her \u00a35 a year.<\/p>\n
She also sewed many a wedding and bridesmaid dress for her friends and family.<\/p>\n
While living in T\u016btira, Lucy had a three-acre (1.2ha) garden which featured more than 300 different camellias.<\/p>\n
Away from family and her garden, Lucy thrived at the T\u016btira Golf Club where she had a handicap of seven.<\/p>\n
She also held the Ladies Cup at the club for at least 12 years and regularly took on players from Wairoa and Waikaremoana at their respective golf clubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pretty good,\u201d Lucy said.<\/p>\n
Although she no longer plays, as she struggles walking, Lucy still loves watching golf on TV.<\/p>\n
She and Syd moved from T\u016btira to Bay View for retirement, before Syd\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Lucy then moved in with her daughter Julie in Greenmeadows, where she still adores life to this day.<\/p>\n
She has simple advice for anyone wanting to live as long as her.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust be a good neighbour and enjoy life and enjoy a little bit of gin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucy grew up in T\u016btira, north of Napier. Her parents had met while working for Herbert Guthrie-Smith and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111446,259501,9063,111442,307,18480,51500,56387,424,2190,14224,32573,3607,111,139,69,90,51252,259502,213,223,8229,810,4506,1316,1354],"class_list":["post-524267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ashton","tag-ashtons","tag-celebration","tag-centenarian","tag-dont","tag-golfers","tag-happy","tag-isnt","tag-life","tag-long","tag-lucy","tag-mark","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-pass","tag-rejoice","tag-sports","tag-the","tag-they","tag-up","tag-usually","tag-when","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}