PARIS – Edna Durgin, her memory sharp as ever, celebrated her 100th birthday Sunday at Market Square Health Care Center.

A constant stream of well-wishers greeted her as she sat next to the entrance of a dining room filled to capacity. Her great-grandson Derek Durgin sat beside her, helping her open up presents and leaning close to read the personal greetings of a pile of birthday cards.

Family members had planned well for the event. Pictures of her throughout her life adorned the wall where someone had hung a chiffon dress she wore in the eighth grade.

Edna took it all in with aplomb, busily scarfing up potato chips from her paper plate. After all, this is a lady who made news two years ago, when she took a ride in a helicopter at the Fryeburg Fair.

“It was something I always wanted to do,” she said when interviewed recently for a memoir that was passed around at the party. “I’d ridden on everything else, so I wanted to ride on a helicopter.”

The memoir clearly shows that Edna still retains an extraordinary talent for details. She remembers being told later that it was 28 degrees below zero when she was born Jan. 26, 1904 on River Road in Turner. She even remembers the name of the doctor who delivered her, Dr. Henry Irish.

She was 9 when her parents divorced and she went to live with her grandparents on a farm.

“I loved my grandmother more than anybody in this world,” she said.

After she graduated from high school, she began to teach. “I said I’d try it for a year. I never got out of it.”

Edna got a teaching degree from Gorham State Teachers College and married Ralph Durgin at age 27, in 1931. She continued to teach until the late 1950s when Ralph’s health began to decline.

Edna loved traveling, and has visited Germany, Italy, the Virgin Islands, and every one of the 50 states in the United States. In Salt Lake City, Utah, she said, “The salt flats were just like snow.”

She loved seeing the big sequoia trees in Washington state, and the big spruce trees in Colorado.

She traveled to Hawaii, where she looked down into a volcano. “I remember thinking, ‘While I’m looking, I hope you don’t erupt.'”

Today, Edna has dreams of Heaven.

“I saw myself always walking, with my husband. And I saw myself hanging out sheets with my mother,” she said. “We were having such a wonderful time.”