Flora Hutchinson celebrated her one hundred fifth birthday with her three children and the residents of Chase Point assisted living facility March 12.
Her two older children, Bill Hutchinson and Peg Wilson, both of Charleston, W.V. came up for the week to visit with their mother, and brother, Bob Hutchinson, of Pemaquid. The trio took Flora out for lunch on her birthday before Chase Point threw her a party with cupcakes and ice cream.
Hutchinson was born Flora Gilfoil in Bedford, Mass., in 1904, before World War I, women’s suffrage and Prohibition.
In her lifetime, 19 Presidents presided over the White House. Her first recollection is of a parade for Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. Hutchinson said she remembers feeling patriotic, waving an American flag on the sidelines.
Her family moved to Utica, NY when she was a young child. When World War I ended, a crowd gathered in the Utica town square, she said. Hutchinson described it as very crowded, exciting, and “kind of like going to a ball game.”
She said she was 15 when women gained the right to vote in 1919, and she remembers her mother being very happy about it. Prohibition lasted from Hutchinson’s teens well into her twenties.
Hutchinson graduated from Forsythe University, a division of Tufts, with a degree in Dental Hygienics. On the advice of a friend, she moved from Boston to Maine in 1925, to become one of the first dental hygienists in Augusta.
“Dentist’s don’t like to clean teeth,” she said. “I was proud of that degree like it was a Ph.D., but I couldn’t find a job in Utica. Everyone wanted a hygienist with experience.”
Dr. Carl Hutchinson hired her for $15 per week in his Augusta office, she said. Within a few years, their working partnership blossomed into romance.
In 1929, the two were married. Hutchinson stopped working when she became pregnant with her first child, she said.
Bob explained his father built a small cottage in Chamberlain in 1919, where the family later spent summers. He said his father’s name appears on an old map at Shaw’s Wharf.
Flora ran the Hutchinson house like clockwork. The family arrived at the cottage in June, when classes let out, and stayed until school began again in the fall, Bob said.
His mother stayed at the cottage, while his father commuted to his dentistry practice in Augusta. “At the end of the year we would all go to the Windsor Fair,” Bob said. “The next day we would go and buy shoes, and the next day we would go off to school.”
The Hutchinsons had been married for 50 years, when Carl died in 1979. Thirty years later, Flora never remarried. When asked why, she said, “no one’s asked me yet.”
Flora was very active in the Christian Science Church in Augusta. She was Second Reader, according to her daughter, Peg.
She is very modest about her lifetime of accomplishments. “My ambitions exceeded my accomplishments,” Flora said.
