Mary Gray says turning 101 years old just kind of snuck up on her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t even aware of it,\u201d she said. \u201cAge was never an issue with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gray, who lives independently in Penn Hills, topped the century mark on Aug. 19.<\/p>\n
Her birthday was celebrated a few days earlier on Sunday at her church, Petra International Ministries<\/a> in Penn Hills, where the Allegheny\/Washington County chapter<\/a> of the nonprofit Twilight Wish Foundation<\/a> made her \u201cQueen for a Day.\u201d<\/p>\n Gray joined Petra about a year ago, when she was 100, said Audrey Woods, who nominated Gray to be celebrated by Twilight Wish.<\/p>\n Woods, 92 and from Pittsburgh\u2019s Lincoln-Lemington neighborhood, remembered thinking, \u201cIf she lives to be more than 100, our ministry is going to have a party for her.<\/p>\n \u201cHere she is.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just felt it was needed for her to see the love that people have for her, from her church family,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n Gray is the oldest of the \u201cForever Young\u201d senior ministry at Petra. She was a nurse for more than 40 years and volunteered with the National Black Nurses <\/a>Association<\/a> and its Pittsburgh chapter, Pittsburgh Black Nurses in Action<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMary\u2019s awesome. She always encouraged all of us,\u201d said Dorretta Lemon Fallen of Monroeville, a past vice president of Pittsburgh Black Nurses in Action. \u201cJust 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.\u201d<\/p>\n If anyone should be honored, it\u2019s her, Lemon Fallen said.<\/p>\n \u201cMary is a giving person,\u201d she said. \u201cShe loves the Lord. Mary is a servant in all ways. I call her the virtuous woman with wisdom.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t make them like her anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n A graduate of Peabody High School, Gray enrolled in the prenursing program at Fisk University, a private historically Black college in Nashville, Tenn.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Gray\u2019s daughter, Shelley Fisher, 71, of Forest Hills and her only child, said her mother was \u201ccourageous.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing up in Pittsburgh\u2019s Garfield neighborhood, Gray was the second oldest of four in her family. She has outlived her brother and two sisters.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was the first in her family to go to college. They sacrificed a lot for her to go,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Fisher described her mother as a \u201cbackground person,\u201d who is sweet, gentle, supportive and loyal and who deserved to be honored for her birthday.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not accustomed to it, but I appreciate it,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n