The Vincentian Aged Care community was delighted to celebrate resident Annemarie’s recent 101st birthday.
Staff and residents put on a great party with an amazing cake and plenty of treats to share.
Annemarie, who still enjoys the simple pleasures of a coffee and reading the newspaper every day in the Vincentian library, was born in Switzerland in 1920.
“I grew up with my parents, one brother and two sisters in Zurich,” says Annemarie. “I was a girl guide, so I used to spend a lot of time skiing and mountaineering. My favourite places to ski were Davos and Mt Rigi and I loved walking the Kleine Scheidegg.”
At the end of World War Two, Annemarie travelled to Germany to work for the United Nations. She also worked as a Swiss Red Cross nurse providing medical aid and assisting displaced persons.
It was here she met her husband who was organising repatriation for displaced Hungarians. They married in 1947 and moved to Switzerland. But they found it hard to settle in Zurich so they decided to seek a new life in Australia.
Her husband started studying medicine and they had two boys. Sadly, three months before her husband’s final exams he was diagnosed with cancer and passed away six months later.
Annemarie found herself on her own with her two boys, then aged seven and nine years old. She started working in administration at Sydney University where she stayed for 20 years, while raising her boys in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
Careers in medicine also appealed to her sons with both becoming doctors, one marrying a doctor and two grand-children now doctors. Altogether Annemarie has six grand-children and six great grand-children.