Sherman students celebrate 100 days & 100 years

John Howell
Posted 2/17/15

She was born on Feb. 13, so her mother looked over the names of saints and decided to call her daughter, Valentine.

And on Friday, Valentine Leveille celebrated her 100th birthday with a room full …

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Sherman students celebrate 100 days & 100 years

Posted

She was born on Feb. 13, so her mother looked over the names of saints and decided to call her daughter, Valentine.

And on Friday, Valentine Leveille celebrated her 100th birthday with a room full of new acquaintances.

Valentine’s granddaughter, Claudia Gandleman, had been planning to do that for the past two years. Gandleman is a fourth grade teacher at Sherman School and, knowing Memere’s, as Valentine is affectionately addressed, birthday would fall close to the 100th day of school, she planned to have her in attendance at the school. Because of snow days, the two days coincided.

Valentine was in her Sunday best for the occasion. Her hair was fixed and her jewelry sparkled; yet she wasn’t keen on seeing a reporter with a camera.

“You’re not going to take my picture, are you?”

Valentine confessed she had lost a tooth the night before. She flashed a smile to show where.

Was it an accident, had she fallen?

“Oh no,” she said. “It’s been loose and I wasn’t going to go to a dentist and pay $200 to extract a tooth.”

Valentine has two children, seven grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. Her husband, Samuel, was 38 when he died. She has been a widow ever since. They met in elementary school in the Phoenix section of West Warwick.

“He said, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry someday,’” Valentine said.

At that time Samuel was in fifth grade; Valentine was in the third. After graduating from eighth grade, Valentine’s parents sent her to boarding school in Canada, where here parents were born.

She returned to Arkwright, a village of West Warwick, where the family lived while her father worked in the cotton mill. She got a job at Mary Barron where she made slips and ladies garments and then cared for her aging parents.

Samuel was true to his word. They married when she was 21.

“There were no other boyfriends,” she said, “not before and not since.”

It was a twist of fate that brought the family back to Arkwright.

Valentine – maiden name Bonin – was born in Minnesota where the family moved from Rhode Island expecting to work a farm handed down by an uncle. That didn’t work out and, when Valentine was 2, the family returned.

Samuel died of complications from rheumatic fever that he had as a child when Valentine’s daughter was 8 and her son was 12. She went to work at the state medical center as a nurse’s aide but, as she points out, she ended up doing the work of a nurse even though she didn’t have the degree. She worked there until she retired at the age of 62.

She was always there to baby-sit for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She also volunteered her time at Meals on Wheels and then Childreach, now Plan International USA based in Warwick, where she did some typing and answering mail.

Valentine continues to live in West Warwick. She has an apartment at Monsignor De Angelis Manor and, up until last year, was still driving. She would still be on the road, but a family member needed the car.

“So, you gave it away?” she was asked.

“Oh, no,” she answered, “I sold it.”

Valentine was surprised by all the fuss over her birthday. She visited all of the classes at Sherman where they wished her happy birthday.

“Every grade wanted to see me. Why do they want to see someone who is 100?” she asked.

The answer might well be that Valentine is ageless. She’s bouncy, full of spirit and an inspiration to those who complain over the aches and pains of old age. She was out until 11 p.m. Saturday celebrating with her extensive family.

They gave her $100 bills.

“All I wanted was a card,” she said in a telephone interview Sunday. “I feel bad, they need their money.”

Valentine has been fortunate. Apart from a triple bypass that she quickly recovered from, she has been healthy. She never smoked and she never drank.

“Clean living,” she said.

Her granddaughter insists she has to come back for her 101st birthday and the following year and so on. Valentine smiled. She’s happy with life, even with Alan Gandleman, Claudia’s husband, who drove her to Sherman School Friday and teases her about playing basketball. She doesn’t play basketball.

She says she never gets riled up … although Alan gets her sometimes.

As for the tooth that fell out while she was brushing, Valentine said Sherman students “told me to put it under my pillow, but I didn’t.”

What, she doesn’t believe in the tooth fairy?

You never know with Valentine.

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  • mthompsondc

    Delightful!

    Saturday, February 21, 2015 Report this