Mary Gray says turning 101 years old just kind of snuck up on her.
“I wasn’t even aware of it,” she said. “Age was never an issue with me.”
Gray, who lives independently in Penn Hills, topped the century mark on Aug. 19.
Her birthday was celebrated a few days earlier on Sunday at her church, Petra International Ministries in Penn Hills, where the Allegheny/Washington County chapter of the nonprofit Twilight Wish Foundation made her “Queen for a Day.”
Gray joined Petra about a year ago, when she was 100, said Audrey Woods, who nominated Gray to be celebrated by Twilight Wish.
Woods, 92 and from Pittsburgh’s Lincoln-Lemington neighborhood, remembered thinking, “If she lives to be more than 100, our ministry is going to have a party for her.
“Here she is.”
“I just felt it was needed for her to see the love that people have for her, from her church family,” Woods said.
Gray is the oldest of the “Forever Young” senior ministry at Petra. She was a nurse for more than 40 years and volunteered with the National Black Nurses Association and its Pittsburgh chapter, Pittsburgh Black Nurses in Action.
“Mary’s awesome. She always encouraged all of us,” said Dorretta Lemon Fallen of Monroeville, a past vice president of Pittsburgh Black Nurses in Action. “Just the way she carries herself. She encourages you to want to be able to be part of something and participate. She helps us get up and go and do.”
If anyone should be honored, it’s her, Lemon Fallen said.
“Mary is a giving person,” she said. “She loves the Lord. Mary is a servant in all ways. I call her the virtuous woman with wisdom.
“They don’t make them like her anymore.”
A graduate of Peabody High School, Gray enrolled in the prenursing program at Fisk University, a private historically Black college in Nashville, Tenn.
Gray said she went to Fisk because, as far as she knew at the time, colleges in Pittsburgh were not accepting Blacks into their nursing programs.
“While I was there, I found out that the University of Pittsburgh was capping their first Black student nurses, so I transferred back to the University of Pittsburgh,” she said.
Gray trained as a pediatric nurse practitioner and worked for the Allegheny County Health Department for 30 years. She retired in 1991 as a nurse supervisor.
Gray’s daughter, Shelley Fisher, 71, of Forest Hills and her only child, said her mother was “courageous.”
Growing up in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood, Gray was the second oldest of four in her family. She has outlived her brother and two sisters.
“She was the first in her family to go to college. They sacrificed a lot for her to go,” Fisher said. “I never experienced some of the prejudices she experienced. When I look back on it, it seems she took it with so much grace and just kept moving forward.”
Fisher described her mother as a “background person,” who is sweet, gentle, supportive and loyal and who deserved to be honored for her birthday.
“I’m not accustomed to it, but I appreciate it,” Gray said.
Gray has been married twice. Her first husband, William Fisher, was the first Black principal of Taylor Allderdice High School. He was 100 when he died on April 13, 2025.
Gray’s second husband, Homer Gray, died in 2002.
Gray attributes her longevity to her genes as well as never smoking, always exercising and staying active.
For Fisher, to still have her mother in her life is a blessing.
“I mean, wow. The wisdom. All the things she’s gone through,” she said.