From top left around the table are Heidi and Phil Poirier, Lillian, Connie Venskus, Michael Poirier, Louise and Robert Stickney and Ben Venskus at Dick’s Restaurant in Mexico. Bruce Farrin/Rumford Falls Times

MEXICO — At 102, Lillian Poirier of Rumford loves Fridays, especially the mornings when she has breakfast out with her family.

Lillian Poirier Bruce Farrin/Rumford Falls Times

On this occasion, the matriarch was seated at a long table set up at Dick’s Restaurant on Main Street.

“I turned 102 on Oct. 16,” she noted, as everyone looked over the menus before ordering.

Asked what the ingredients were to her longevity, Lillian, still sharp with her mind, quickly responded, “”I never thought I would live this old. Nobody lived this old in my family. I attribute that to my faith in God and my family.”

She added, “I start every morning with a prayer, and I do my crosswords and jumble everyday…I keep my mind busy.”

The weekly family breakfast has been a tradition for how long?

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Daughter Louise Stickney fielded that one. “It started off with Bob (Stickney, husband) and I, and my mom and my dad, probably 20 years ago — every Friday morning.

We met at different places, including the former Covered Wagon in Mexico…even as far back as when Freddie’s Restaurant in Rumford was in business.”

Lillian, the youngest of nine children, grew up in Mexico on Arlington Avenue, which is now called Chase Avenue.

She worked for a time for the post office in Mexico. “I did everything. I even delivered special deliveries on foot because we didn’t have a truck in those days. I walked a lot.”

Lillian added, “I never learned to drive, though. That’s why I walked.”

She said tried to drive once, but “I didn’t have enough confidence.”

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Lillian married Joseph ‘Tony’ Poirier in 1946 and soon after this they bought a home in Rumford where they raised their 6 children and lived for the next 65 years. He passed in 2012, but she still lives in the Penobscot Street home.

Tony was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. Because of his bilingual capabilities, he served as a French interpreter in the European theater during World War II.

Lillian said they would write letters back and forth and he would call her ‘My Dear Lilly.’

She noted, “We had a great 66 years together.”

Remembering growing up, Louise said that at Christmastime, there were six kids (Louise, Connie, Richard, Phil, Michael and Antoinette) and every kid got their favorite dessert, whatever it was. “Everything she made was excellent.”

Louise noted they used to have ice delivered for mom’s refrigerator.

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Lillian added, “We had an ice man, a milk man and a bread man.”

Louise recalled being told that after she was born, they had trouble with the baby formula that would spoil in the ice-fed refrigerator.

She said that during the 1950’s, Lillian got her first electric refrigerator…but “you couldn’t just go out and buy one back then. There was a waiting line. A Mr. Ruff, at a business on Exchange Street, moved her name to the top of the line to make sure she got an electric refrigerator so the formula wouldn’t spoil.

And there was the family connection to the Rumford ski area.

Louise noted that, “My dad would be up to the Chisholm Ski Club (at Black Mountain ski area) for races and stuff. Before the races, she would be cooking, baking. What did they used to call you, mom?

“The cookie lady,” responded Lillian.

Louise said her mom would bake “hundreds of cookies as a volunteer and bring them up there for the competitors.”

She would bring those up to Muriel’s Kitchen at Black Mountain, a small building where Chisholm ski club members would provide ski event competitors and volunteers warm drinks and sweet treats.

Lillian noted, “Hey, look at me. I’ve got my beautiful family here. How God has blessed me. I’m so happy.”

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