"I arrived to see her and she said to me 'well where are my flowers?'," Vincent said.

"I said 'mum flowers only last a week and they are dead' and she looked at me and said 'well you could be too but I like having you around'."

Such quickfire wit and humour was a trademark of Mrs Vincent, who died in the early hours of Melbourne Cup day after having experienced heart and kidney problems in recent years.

She had contributed to the community over a long period, having been a CWA member for seven decades and a part of the Wodonga Show Society's ladies auxiliary for 37 years.

The young Elaine Ward grew up at Laceby near Wangaratta and went on horseback to Oxley State School.

She attended Wangaratta High School and learnt the piano from the age of 14 and playing in a band farewelling World War II soldiers.

Little did she know one of them was her future husband Des Vincent.

"I played for my husband's parting, but I don't remember ever seeing him," Mrs Vincent recalled to The Border Mail in 2015.

The couple wed at Wangaratta's Holy Trinity Cathedral in 1949 and later moved to a farm at Huon looking across Ludlows Reserve to Lake Hume.

After their farm was bought by the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation, the Vincents ran the Stagecoach Motel in Wodonga for 20 years.

They then returned to Huon, buying another farm.

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In 2015, Mrs Vincent and her son staged Anzac Day and Remembrance Day concerts together at Albury's Commercial Club.

Vincent recalled his mother "brought the house down" and upstaged him after having waited 62 years to share the limelight with him.

In addition to her son, Mrs Vincent is survived by daughter Dhirleen Clark, a Wodonga hairdresser, and six grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren. Her husband Des died in 2017.

Vincent was the celebrant at his mother's funeral, after having recently qualified for that role.