THE Border’s oldest resident, Daisy Gill, died in Albury yesterday, six weeks short of her 108th birthday.
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The long-time Lavington resident and widow of a Gallipoli soldier, died at Albury’s Mercy Place nursing home.
A lively and popular woman who worked for 30 years at Perls clothing shop in Olive Street, she was touched by tragedy, losing her husband, Albert, her three sons and three brothers long before her own death.
Her legacy is best represented by her five grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren and seven great-great-grandchildren.
Daisy Paske was born at Queanbeyan on July 22, 1904, and raised near Cooma. She was 10 when World War I broke out.
Her husband, Albert, 11 years older, served for four years, surviving both Gallipoli and the Western Front.
They met at a football match at Gundagai and married there in 1923.
“I was whisked away for my honeymoon in a horse and sulky,” Mrs Gill once said.
“I can remember seeing my very first motor car driving down a street in Gundagai.”
Mrs Gill served as a Red Cross nurse in World War II, meeting wounded soldiers arriving in Melbourne.
On Albert’s death in 1970, she joined the Albury War Widows Guild and the Laurel Club.
She played bowls for 30 years and in later years kept her zest for life, living independently until she was past 105 and enjoying visiting the Commercial Club.
“I have got a lot to be thankful for,’’ she said.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this life, but, really, life is what you make it.
“You’ve got to get out and mix, keep the mind working and not sit inside your four walls.”
When she wasn’t caring for friends and family, Mrs Gill worked crocheting blankets for the Border’s homeless.
“Daisy would walk over hot coals to help someone else,” a cousin once said.
A funeral service will be held at the Lester & Son funeral home in North Albury on Tuesday at 2pm.