Edith McPherson clutched the wooden frame that houses a personal birthday greeting from The Queen, which she received days before her 100th birthday earlier this month.

“A last week she (Queen Elizabeth) come look fi me”, ‘Miss Claire’, as she is fondly called, joked when the Jamaica Observer visited her last Thursday at her home in Glengoffe, St Catherine.

“I am so pleased to know that you are celebrating your one hundredth birthday on the 10th of September, 2018. I send my congratulations and best wishes to you on such a special occasion,” read the note over the signature of The Queen, whose photo completes the special greeting.

Silver-haired and laughing periodically, McPherson — whose close family and friends advised that her memory was understandably spotty — was visibly enthused by the personal greeting from Her Majesty.

“She was very excited,” the centenarian’s granddaughter and caretaker, Terica Brown Abrahams, said in reference to McPherson’s reaction to the letter. “Even since this week I was showing it to her and was explaining what it was about and she was very enthusiastic about it. Her comment was that The Queen is a beautiful lady.”

The last of the centenarian’s nine children, Yvonne McPherson Reynolds, explained that it was one of her grandsons, who currently resides in England, who applied to have McPherson’s 100th birthday acknowledged by The Queen.

“She went to England in the late 60s and spent four and a half years and came back in 1972,” McPherson Reynolds said.

“When her hundredth birthday was approaching — which we never really plan to have a celebration per se, because my mother is not a person to have this large gathering — my nephew said he would send in to get a recognition for her from The Queen.”

The centenarian’s son, Ray Howell, who is a past president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association, spoke glowingly about his mother’s commitment to community service.

“She grew up in the Methodist Church and up until the last four years she was the reservoir of information for the community. So anything you want to know about the community, she was able to tell you,” Howell said.

“Other residents of the community would come to [her] for advice. She was a strong counsellor and advocate in her own right, so people sought advice and counselling from her, both young and adult,” he added.

His sister, McPherson Reynolds, agreed, and offered that their mother is known for her long, often impromptu speeches at any formal event.

“They would call on her and she deliver a speech. If you go to a function, her name don’t have to be on no programme, but they call upon her so long as they see her in the audience, and she could [deliver] with nothing written down,” McPherson Reynolds related.

“And then you have to draw frock tail, because after 15 minutes she still a talk,” Howell interjected with a laugh.

McPherson Reynolds further explained that her mother was such a source of knowledge that the late noted Jamaican scholar and sociologist Alston “Barry” Chevannes had visited her to gather information for one of his studies.

When asked how their mother had come to know so much about Glengoffe, Howell blurted out “She bright!”, while Brown Abrahams added that McPherson was a socialite and a household name in Glengoffe.

“She used to socialise a lot. She would go to functions and, you know, everybody know Miss Claire,” Brown Abrahams said.

McPherson Reynolds described her mother as a Christian, a no-nonsense person who is jovial and who always had the last word in any discussion.

Having lost her mother at age 13, McPherson moved from Retreat, where she was born, to live with her grandparents in the neighbouring Glengoffe district until she was 16, when she went to live with her father in another neighbouring district, Nottingham.

Her father insisted that she acquire a skill and sent her to her uncle’s wife who schooled in the art of dressmaking

“It is like a family trend, because her mother, grandmother, great grandmother, they were dressmakers. And even my eldest sister that passed off took up that trade, and then I also at a later time took up that trade,” McPherson Reynolds explained.

She noted that her mother could have opted to live in England, but chose instead to return home to Jamaica as she was determined to raise her children herself.

“She came back willingly to take care of us. She was not like other parents who went abroad and were just looking at what they can achieve over there and neglect their children. She made that sacrifice and she came back to take care of us, and made sure that we got proper schooling,” McPherson Reynolds said.