What is the key to reaching the age of 108?
If you ask Betty Haver, the answer is eating ice cream — her favorite flavor is chocolate — and drinking gin and tonics. It is also staying physically active.
Family and friends gathered at Silvergate Rancho Bernardo on April 7 to celebrate Haver’s 108th birthday. Her party gifts included a bag sent by the San Diego Padres that was filled with team items, including a Padres scarf, necklace, jersey, beanie hat, baseball signed by former player Trevor Hoffman, another ball, a foam finger and a bobblehead of current player Fernando Tatís Jr.
Haver has been a Padres fan since not long after she and her husband moved from Indiana to Vista in 1976 to be near their daughter Judy Walter and her family.
Betty Haver, a San Diego Padres fan for a half-century, was all smiles while seeing the gifts the team gave her to celebrate her 108th birthday. (Sally McNew)
When asked why she likes the Padres so much, Haver said, “Why not?” Though she said she likes all the players, she reportedly has a special fondness for Manny Machado and Tatis Jr.
She has mostly watched games on TV, but has made it to some at Petco Park, including on her 100th birthday.
“It’s quite an exciting place,” Haver said of the Padres’ home stadium.
Walter recalled going to a Chicago baseball game with her father. Her mother liked listening to the games on the radio.
“We were Padres fans when they moved out here and eventually we got season tickets. She would go to Padres games occasionally and then started watching them all the time on TV,” Walter said.
This year on opening day (March 26), Haver hosted a Padres party at Silvergate Ramcho Bernardo, which led to her being featured on 10News.
“Betty is truly remarkable,” said Silvergate activities director Trixie Prince. “She remains very coherent and lucid, still gets around with her walker and greets everyone she meets with the most beautiful smile.”
Haver moved to Silvergate’s memory care facility last December after being a resident at Arcadia Place Senior Living in Vista since she was 99 because she needed more care, Walter said.
Elizabeth “Betty” Goss was born on April 7, 1918, the oldest child of Frank and Edna (Babcock) Goss. She grew up on a farm in Remington, Indiana, and attended the local elementary and high school, according to her family. As a teenager, she attended the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933.
The high school senior photo of Elizabeth “Betty” Goss in 1936. (Courtesy of Nancy Haver)
Daughter Nancy Haver said her mom graduated from high school in 1936 and her family’s farmhouse was electrified in 1938.
Betty’s sister Patricia was born in 1929 and died in 2023 at age 94, while brother Jim was born in 1930 and died in 2019 at age 88, Nancy Haver said.
“(Mom is) the record breaker,” Haver said, noting her maternal grandmother passed at age 84. “(Mom) spoke with both siblings often and loved traveling with them.”
On the Goss farm the family grew corn, wheat and oats. There were also cows, pigs and chickens.
“At the age of 4 (mom) climbed up to the top of the 100-foot silo on the farm,” Walter said. “She used to collect eggs and deliver eggs and butter by car at the age of 12 to in-town customers.”
Haver said she was in 4-H, where she liked the cooking program more than sewing because “I was not much of a sewer.”
As for her favorite thing to bake, those were chocolate chip cookies, she said. Haver also enjoyed making homemade apple sauce along with baking apple and cherry pies.
Following her high school graduation, she briefly attended business school in West Lafayette, Indiana, then worked at Purdue University’s Cooperative Extension. It was while there that she met her future husband, Tom Haver.
Tom and Betty Haver in 1942, not long after their wedding on Thanksgiving Day in 1941. (Courtesy of Nancy Haver)
According to Walter, her parents met at a Purdue bowling alley while each was on a date with someone else. They married on Thanksgiving Day in 1941 in her mother’s hometown of Remington. Early in their marriage they lived in Saginaw, Michigan, but then the couple returned to Indiana and settled in Indianapolis, where they lived for 35 years.
It was there that they raised their two daughters, Judy and Nancy. Tom had a career as an engineer in naval avionics while Betty was a secretary.
The couple was married for 72 years, until Tom’s death at age 95. They have two grandsons, a great-granddaughter and two great-grandsons.
Travel and camping were favorite activities for the couple throughout their marriage. Nancy Haver recalled her parents taking trips to the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, Indiana Dunes, the Oregon coast, the Rockies, the Sierras, visiting Washington Island in Wisconsin and seeing most of the Grand Canyon.
“(Mom) was often traveling nationwide to my father’s masters’ swim meets while they were in their 80s,” Nancy Haver said.
She added her parents’ overseas trips included visiting Wales in 1996 along with Germany, Ireland, England, British Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii during the 1990s.
Tom and Betty Haver during a hike while on a trip to Wales in 1996. (Courtesy of Nancy Haver)
Betty Haver said she enjoyed camping because “I didn’t have to do much. We went to all kinds of places. A lot of national parks.”
They often stayed in a small camping trailer and later an RV and she cooked using a campfire stove.
“When I was little, we went to Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Glacier,” Walter said. “We camped in Michigan a lot because we lived in Indiana. Also in Florida. We went to most of the 50 states.”
Staying active was important to Haver. She walked a lot and up to age 99 took classes at LA Fitness and used the treadmill, Walter said.
“In her late 90s she climbed up on a kitchen island to change a light bulb as it was bothering her and no one else was around,” Walter said.
Haver has also always been involved in the Presbyterian church and “cares about reaching out to anyone in need,” Walter said. “Her philosophy is to keep on going.”
Elizabeth “Betty” Goss, age 4, with the Christmas presents she received in 1922, including doll Alice Jane, which she still has with her at Silvergate Rancho Bernardo. (Courtesy of Nancy Haver)
Nancy Haver said her mother still has a doll named Alice Jane that was given to her for Christmas in 1922. The doll was restored and is kept on her recliner at Silvergate.
See more photos at PomeradoNews.com.
Betty Haver, seated with her cake, surrounded by family and friends during her 108th birthday party on April 7 at Silvergate Rancho Bernardo. (Sally McNew)
Elizabeth “Betty” Goss as a toddler in 1920. (Courtesy of Nancy Haver)
Elizabeth “Betty” Goss with her dog at her family’s farm in Remington, Indiana in 1923. (Courtesy of Nancy Haver)
Show Caption
1 of 3
Betty Haver, seated with her cake, surrounded by family and friends during her 108th birthday party on April 7 at Silvergate Rancho Bernardo. (Sally McNew)