Five years ago I was privileged to share in the 100th birthday celebrations of Lady Hannays at the Hilton Hotel. At that time, the centenarian was able to conduct her very own interview with me. When she celebrated her 105th birthday last Friday, on Christmas Eve, the interview had to be done with her youngest daughter, Valerie, and daughter-in-law, Irma.
Lady Baby as she is fondly called, from her nickname "Baby", is still in perfect physical health, but has become both immobile and forgetful in the past year.
Up to three years ago, Victoria Hannays was still attending Sunday Mass, "I would drop her and pick her back up, then she decided for herself that she was no longer going to church" says Irma.
"Then in 1998 she broke her left leg, which healed and she was up and about walking. In 1999 she broke her hip and since then has not been herself."
Born on December 24, 1894, in a house just opposite to St Mary's College on Frederick Street, to a wealthy cocoa farmer, Eduardo Nichola Gonzalez and Isabella Regina (nee Villafana), both from Venezuela, Victoria was the eighth of their ten children, and the only daughter to have survived, and grew up with seven brothers. Lady Hannays is one of a unique group who on January 1, 2000, would have lived through an entire century.
In 1920, she married Courtenay Hannays, who was embarking on what turned out to be a brilliant legal career, at the tiny church in Pointe-a-Pierre, near the oilfields. The union produced nine children, Gabrielle, Jessel, Lynette, Dillys, Len, Dave, Kitty, Gervase and Valerie. She has outlived her husband who died in 1964 at age 72 and three of her children, Jessel, a High Court Judge, Kitty a journalist and Len a solicitor and conveyancer.
She has never worked and concentrated on rearing her family and devoting time to her church.
With the passing of time and loss of memory, Lady Hannays has become more and more family oriented and says Irma "talks mostly about her girls (meaning her daughters). She still talks about the train and going through the tunnel when she travelled from St Roses Girls School in Port of Spain to her home on her father's estate at El Paraiso. You will notice up to this day she has a slight French patois accent, this came from her teacher, Miss Delpeche."
A devout Roman Catholic, I myself remember seeing the very petite lady walking each morning from her Hayes Street home to Mass at the Archbishop's Chapel on Flood Street, and back.
Lady Hannays was an active member of the St Patrick's Parish, where she went to Mass up to three years ago. A member of the Legion of Mary and a tertiary of the St Dominic's Order, explained as "a step below the nunnery." For her long and devoted service to the church Pope John Paul II awarded her the Bene Merenti award.
When Sir Courtenay was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II (the actual investiture took place in Port of Spain, and was carried out by Sir Edward Beetham, the country's Governor General at the time), Lady Hannays was at his side on what could be considered one of the highpoints in her 105 years.
For Victoria Hannays, life has certainly come full circle as the early years of her married life were spent at No 14 Fitt Street, before moving to a stately St Clair home on Hayes Street where she lived for 58 years. Lady Hannays returned to No 14 Fitt Street six years ago to live with her son Dave and his wife Irma.