Arrow Calendar Location Icon Phone Icon Quotation Mark Signature Programs Tickets Checkmark Heart icon

Helen Graham Turner Smiling

If a popularity contest were held in Linwood, there is a good chance the winner would be Helen Graham Turner, who celebrated her 111th birthday over the weekend.

Well-wishers attended a birthday party in her honor at Brandywine Living at Brandall Estates, which Turner has called home since 2011. They waited in line to give the birthday girl best wishes in person, get a picture taken with her or collect one of her famous hugs.

Never shy, Turner made a grand entrance to her party with bagpipes by Jeff MacNeil, of Egg Harbor Township, who said he has been a fan of Turner pretty much his entire life.

In her 111 years, Turner has lived what she freely says is a wonderful life complete with happy and difficult times, and she remembers much of it with astonishing clarity.

When Turner began her formal education, she attended a one-room schoolhouse where there were two teachers for grades one through eight. She went to Sudlersville High School in Maryland, where the Class of 1924 had 10 students. (One of her classmates was future Baseball Hall of Famer Jimmy Foxx, whom she described to her granddaughter as a real jock.)

Read the full story on ShoreNews Today