Woman turns 100 with ‘clean lungs’ – after quitting smoking at 95

A pensioner has reached her 100th birthday despite smoking 20 cigarettes a day for most of her life – as doctors hail her “clean as a bell lungs and heart”.

Mary ‘Molly’ Repper, who gave up the habit just aged 95, was joined at Weston View Care Home in Moray in Scotland by family and friends to celebrate.

Both daughter Beatrice and son Jim had traveled to Keith from London on Wednesday, September 6, with their respective partners for their mother’s big day.

“Smart,” “persistent,” and “organized” were some of the phrases they used to describe how Molly had been throughout her long life.

Beatrice said: “Mum was great with numbers.

“At a checkout, she could add up the numbers faster in her head than the cashier could on the tape – and they’d know for sure if they got the amount wrong.”

Jim said: “We feared the worst when mum fell and broke her hip five years ago, but she fought back.

“She had been smoking since she was a teenager, but the doctors treating her said her lungs were clear and her heart was sound as a bell.”

Molly was born on 4th September 1924, in Peterculter near Aberdeen.

She first met George, her future husband, before the start of World War II.

However, the pair did not come together as a couple until the end of the conflict.

George, the son of a policeman, had grown up in London, but in 1934, he traveled to Aberdeen for a job interview.

Finding his prospective employer’s place of business closed for lunch, he decided to take a walk down Union Street, where he bumped into a recruiting sergeant from the Scots Guards, who persuaded him to join.

As an army regular, he was sent to North Africa after the outbreak of war in 1939.

Captured by the Italian army in 1942, he was interned as a prisoner of war.

However, after Italy switched sides the following year, George managed to escape.

He then spent the next six months on the run in Italy before being captured again, this time by the Nazis.

George was sent to a prison camp in Germany where he was imprisoned until the end of the war.

Molly married George in 1947 and the couple went to live in London, where he followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the police force.

Meanwhile, she worked a variety of different jobs, including being a school bursar and working as a medical secretary.

The couple eventually returned this way in 1973 after George retired from the force.

Coincidentally, they came to live in the former police station in Knock.

George was more than six years older than Molly.

As time went on, his health began to deteriorate, which led to the couple moving into sheltered housing at Taylor Court in Keith during the 1980s.

Here, Molly cared for him until his death in 2002.

Molly has five grandchildren – Michael, Daniel, Louise, Alice and George.

She also has five great-grandchildren – James, Matthew, Eliza, Ari and Dimo-James – some of whom live in Bulgaria.