Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Lilias Davys Street recently enjoyed another birthday--her 105th.

For Lilias Davys Street, birthdays keep coming

By Miriam Eljas

One hundred and five candles would melt any cake, but not if Los Gatos resident Lilias Davys Street can help it. On Aug. 3, she blew those candles out with gusto. This centenarian is the oldest living native of Nelson, British Columbia, a city founded five years after her birth in 1893.

"I've lived a very happy life. I have no regrets except for losing my loved ones along the way," says Street, whose loved ones include husband Hugh MacQueen Street, who died in 1966 at age 90.

Airplanes, cars and other modern inventions all whizzed by Street, who says she was neither impressed nor excited by these developments as they came along. "I just took it all with grace. It didn't really affect me all that much," Street explains. "But I won't have anything to do with computers."

"The computer age is a bit much for her," interjects her 71-year-old daughter Lucy Street, who lives with her mother in the La Rinconada Hills development. "The only thing that remotely interested her was the cordless telephone. She is still amazed that you can walk outside and talk on the phone."

Street, whose memory is as sharp as ever, recalls the sister ship of the Titanic, the Moratamia, which brought her back to her home town of Nelson after she attended Crescent House College for Young Ladies in England for six years. Her ties to England extend as far back as the reign of Queen Victoria, for whom her great-grandfather was a tutor. "Oh, I am very attached to Britain," she says with a smile. "The Queen Mum just sent me birthday greetings through one of her ladies in waiting."

In case the men of Nelson were sent to fight for England during WWII, Street trained as an ambulance driver for the Women's Army Corps and used her children as practice patients in stretchers.

Despite her close ties with England, Street has a soft spot for Los Gatos and surrounding areas. After 47 years in Seattle, where she raised two daughters and two step-daughters, she moved here in 1961 to be closer to daughter Helen Gillespie, a Monte Sereno resident. Having seen Los Gatos transform from orchard fields to a busy, lively town, Street feels at home here. "Oh my goodness," she says. "It's growing every day! You can't stop progress, you know."

With six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, Street's biggest hope is to live to the next millennium so that she can proudly say she lived in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. "The years keep going by, and I don't even feel it. I don't know what I have done to live so long," she says.

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