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Her helium balloons are beginning to deflate and she may not be up to dancing in heels any more, but Joy Beattie Major is keen to keep her 100th birthday celebrations going.
When the Weekly team arrives at Joy’s rest home on Auckland’s North Shore, she is sitting in her cosy pink-themed bedroom and excitedly tells us about all the messages she’s received – including a birthday card from King Charles – but questions a lack of presents.
“I got cupcakes and a bouquet of flowers, but I didn’t get many presents… so I think I better have my birthday again! No, just kidding, you don’t need presents when you’re 100 because you’ve had everything three times over.”
Joy is a straight-shooter with a needle-sharp wit. She checks her pink headscarf is in place and her fuchsia nail polish isn’t chipped – “because I’m vain, you know” – and shares with us a century of vivid memories, from being a single mother in the 1950s to her great love of dance.
Joy’s clever mother made all her costumes, including when she starred in Aladdin.
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Born in Ponsonby on March 28, 1923, Joy began tap and ballroom dancing as a young girl.
Alongside her dance partner Neil Arrow, Joy performed the quickstep and waltz at many venues, including balls at the Peter Pan Cabaret.
Ballroom babes! Eight-year-old Joy with her dance partner Neil.
In 1939, at the start of World War II, the young dancer joined the Kathleen Boyle Concert Party, before going on to form her own concert party, which included her older brother Des.
Joy met her future husband, US Army Officer Warren Major, when she was 20 years old.
“I was working in the box office of the Majestic Theatre in Queen Street,” she recalls. “He was in New Zealand on R&R from Guadalcanal and came with two fellow officers to reserve tickets for the movies that night. We all started chatting.
“He came to my 21st birthday and then it was over a year before he returned to marry me,” shares Joy, who then travelled to the US as a war bride on the SS Lurline ocean liner.
“I went from here to Australia and arrived at San Francisco, before catching an overnight train across America to New York. But my husband wasn’t there to meet me! He’d been told I was coming in at another station.
“So, there I was waiting with my two suitcases on a cold Friday night, this little Kiwi girl with only $10. It was disastrous and no one understood my funny accent.
“I went up to a policeman and asked where the Red Cross was. I walked into the Red Cross, and they rang Warren’s mother and got him to eventually come to me.”
Joy asked to see a dance recital in her new home in Vermont and thought, “I can do better than that!”
She continues, “So, I rented a hall to start with and eventually had my own proper dance studio. I used to charge $1.50 a lesson and made more money in one day than my husband earned all week at his clerical job.”
Lovely line-up! The Beattie Concert Party, where Joy is in the front row, far right.
Their marriage wasn’t to last when, six years later, Joy returned to the US from a trip to New Zealand with their then three-year-old daughter Gay to learn Warren was having an affair.
“Warren couldn’t decide whether he wanted me or her. So I said, ‘You can’t make up your mind, so I’ll go home’ and brought Gay back to New Zealand.
“In that first week, I started cashiering at St James Theatre. And when the TAB opened in Auckland, I moved there because they paid more. There were no benefits for solo mums in those days. It was very hard.
“When I wanted to buy a house at 40, the bank manager wasn’t going to give me a loan, but the fact I had two dependants – Gay and my mother – was the only reason I got a mortgage.”
Daughter Gay is the love of Joy’s life.
The inspiring centenarian worked at the TAB for 33 years until retiring at 65. She then voluntarily managed the Hospice Op Shop in Birkenhead until she was 82.
When asked what she puts her longevity down to, the great-grandmother-of-five pauses and says perhaps it’s because she’s been on her own.
Joy with great-grandkids (back row, from left) Dan and Samuel. Front row: Gus, Zoey and Molly.
“I’ve had operations, sicknesses and a hysterectomy at 32 – nothing ever serious though – and it’s been a good life, but for a long time I felt I couldn’t trust men to get involved romantically again.
“I should have gone on Tinder or something!” she chuckles. “But it wasn’t around in those days! So I kept myself busy with my wonderful daughter, my job and looked after my mother until she was 90. I cannot believe that I’m 100. That’s awfully old, isn’t it?”
