BY ROD HANSEN
As a child in the early 1900s, Colombe (Poulin) Ouellette saw the first automobile ever to ride on a New Hampshire street.
On the day Colombe Ouellette turned 108, Gov. John Lynch came to the Hillsborough County Nursing home to see her.
“For someone in our state to turn 108 is a remarkable occasion, and I wanted to be here to wish her a happy birthday,” said Lynch, who also read Ouellette a proclamation honoring her as a person who has lived in three centuries.
“I came to wish you a happy birthday,” Lynch said, leaning close to her left ear to be better heard.
“Thank you,” Ouellette said, then continued to pray aloud in French as she had been doing.
On the afternoon of Tuesday, March 27, Lynch joined four of Ouellette’s children, two Goffstown selectmen and several nursing home staff members in celebrating the milestone anniversary with the lifelong New Hampshire resident.
Born in Suncook in 1899, Ouellette moved to Manchester at the age of 8. She married Joseph Ouellette and started a family of six children.
Joseph Ouellette, who worked in the Amoskeag mills and later at a shoe shop, died in 1939 at the age of 41 following an operation.
Though Colombe was left to raise the family of two boys and four girls by herself, her children remember a childhood of little hardship.
“She brought us all up well, and she kept us on our toes,” recalls son Gerry Ouellette, of Hooksett, who at 74 was the youngest of the Ouellette children to attend the celebration.
Sister Jacqueline Ouellette, Colombe’s daughter, who serves with the Religious Good Shepherd in Montreal, recalled an upbringing where the family attended St. Anthony’s Parish in East Manchester, and the children went to St. Anthony’s grammar and high schools while living on Taylor Street.
Jacqueline also recalls her mother working as a seamstress in the house, with all the children also working when they reached the appropriate age.
“She gave us an allowance, but we gave her our paychecks. That wasn’t so unusual at the time,” Jacqueline said.
Pauline Houle of Goffstown said some fond childhood memories of her mother included neighborhood picnics to places such as Bear Brook and Webster Lake. Ouellette would rent a bus and gather the neighborhood children for these expeditions, Houle recalled.
She never married again and remained single throughout her life, Houle said.
“One time somebody asked her why she never remarried, and she said, ‘I’ve been on my own so long, that’s just what I’m used to,’” Houle said.
All of the Ouellette children are still living and range in age from 70 to 83.
“I suppose she did a good job with us; none of us went astray,” Pauline said.
Ouellette now has a total of 86 living descendants, including six children, 19 grandchildren, 38 great-grandchildren and 23 great-great grandchildren, Gerry Ouellette said.
A resident of Goffstown since 1986, Ouellette lived with her daughter Ferne Saindon in Medford Farms for a few years and has lived at the Hillsborough County Nursing Home since 1996, more than a decade after receiving Goffstown’s Boston Post Cane in 1995.
Traditionally awarded to a town’s oldest resident, the Boston Post Cane carries a curse that Colombe Ouellette has managed to avoid for 11 years, Gerry Ouellette said.
“A lot of people don’t want to get (the Boston Post Cane) because they think it means you’re going to die. Not for her, it didn’t,” he said.
Pauline Houle said her mother remains in good health, and was able to carry on a conversation until a couple of years ago.
“She isn’t on any medication, and she still loves it when we bring her food,” said Pauline.
Selectmen Phil D’Avanza and Vivian Blondeau visited to let her again view the Boston Post Cane, which is kept at town hall.
Blondeau knelt close to Ouellette and spoke a Hail Mary prayer, in French, into the elderly woman’s ear.
Ouellette stayed quiet for a moment and smiled, then returned to saying her own prayer in French.
“Il viendra de là pour juger les vivants et les morts,” she said, or “He will come to judge the living and the dead.”