A birthday one century in the making

Humor, praise mark celebration for state's oldest female war veteran

Wit on display, Irene Davey had Kevin Dumas, mayor of Attleboro, by her side as she celeberated 100 years of living yesterday at the town's senior center. (SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF)

ATTLEBORO - Until last summer, she drove a car. She flirts with men half her age. And her timing? Irene Davey has had a century to get it just right.

Yesterday, when she walked into a crowd of admirers, family members, and friends who had gathered for a surprise party in honor of her 100th birthday, Davey, the oldest female veteran in Massachusetts, squealed like a young girl.

Then she started firing off one-liners as she talked about her job as a military recruiter during World War II.

"If they didn't want to go into the service," Davey deadpanned in her clear, steady, voice, "I made them."

At the party at the Rev. Larson Senior Center in Attleboro, Massachusetts officials said that Davey had blazed a trail by joining the Army at a time when few women enlisted. State senators called her a legend. State representatives invited her to be an honorary member. President Bush and Laura Bush sent her a plaque.

"I got in this door," Davey remarked at all the praise, "but I don't think I'll be able to get out of it, I got such a big head."

Davey recalled enlisting in the Army in 1943 because her late husband, Harold, had joined the Air Force.

"He said, 'Do you think you'd like it?' and I said, 'Do you think you will?' " Davey recalled, a smile creasing her face.

Davey joined the military in 1943 and served for two years in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, first as a truck driver at Fort Devens and later as a recruiter in Dayton, Ohio. By the time she received her honorable discharge, Davey was a technician third grade, the equivalent of a staff sergeant.

Davey said she chose not to serve overseas because Harold, an Air Force crew chief, was stationed in Wyoming.

But she saw her share of devastation and pain as she drove wounded soldiers from Boston to the hospital at Fort Devens.

Davey and other motor pool drivers were under strict orders not to disclose where they were taking the wounded to anyone, not even to the soldiers themselves. Once, she recalled, "I was bringing back a young man who wanted to know where he was. And I couldn't tell him. It was very hard."

But the worst war in Davey's time was not World War II, she said, but the one the United States is fighting today in Iraq.

"I think it is the worst thing in the world," said Davey, who has criticized the war since it began in 2003. "Now we are in the worst mess we've ever been in during my lifetime, and that's 100 years."

Harold Davey died 35 years ago. These days, Irene Davey lives alone in her house in Attleboro, cooking for herself and family members who stop by to bring her groceries and to taste her fabled chicken soup. She solves a crossword puzzle each day, and when friends come over, they play Scrabble and cribbage.

She says she is in perfect health. Her daughter, Patty, said she "doesn't look a day older than 75." Her son, Martin, calls her every morning, "and if he doesn't call me by 8:45 I'm having a nervous breakdown," Davey said. "I worry that there's something wrong with him."

After Harold died, Davey never remarried. "To tell you the truth, it gets lonely," she told her friends yesterday. Moments later, she was leaning against the shoulder of state Senator Scott P. Brown, one of the many officials who took turns sitting next to her in the living room of the senior center.

"I can't propose to you, because I'm married," said Brown.

"That's OK," she told Brown, who is 48 years old, after a brief pause. "You're too old for me."

Correction: A story in the Jan. 26 City & Region section about the 100th birthday of Irene Davey stated that Davey is the oldest living woman veteran residing in Massachusetts. The state Department of Health and Human Services subsequently confirmed that an older woman veteran is living in the state. Harriet Felton, who was born April 21, 1906, served as a military recruiter during World War II and was honorably discharged as a lieutenant commander.