MIDDLEBORO — The words on her shirt said it all.

“Aged to Perfection.’’

That saying was shared by about 100 friends and relatives who attended the 100th birthday celebration for Elizabeth May Young of Middleboro on Saturday, April 20 at the Middleboro Council on Aging. 

Having so much love around her was “heaven,’’ the birthday girl said.

A native of Kansas who grew up in Virginia, she came up north to attend college. She married her husband Albert in 1947 and moved to Middleboro, where she has lived since.

Together they raised six children: Shirley Young, James Young, Joyce Bristol, George Young, Mabel Young and Brian Young. Her husband died in 2011.

Caring for her children was her top priority, Young said. 

Her eldest daughter Shirley recalled how talented her mother was with her hands. She taught furniture caning for 30 years, knitted and crocheted and made many of her children’s clothes, including their Easter outfits, she remembered.

And these aren’t just long-ago memories. Young noted that she finished her latest creation, a scarf, the day of the party.

Shirley and her mother also both received their driver’s licenses— at about the same time. As teenage Shirley was becoming certified to drive, her mother decided it was time for her to do the same, Shirley remembered with a laugh.

“But I got mine first,’’ her mother quipped of receiving their licenses.

She also hosted an annual sunrise breakfast, her great-granddaughter Angela Pinarreta recalled. On that day, relatives would visit her Middleboro home, sleep outside in tents and rise early for 5 a.m. breakfast.

“I miss her blueberry muffins,’’ Pinaretta said of those days. She called the 100th birthday “amazing.’

Her great-grandmother said she never expected to celebrate a century of living.

But she has a philosophical approach to how she reached the memorable milestone.

“You’ve got to take it as it comes,’’ she said. “I just kept on living.’’