A 103-year-old Elmont fixture

Berthenia Garnett has become so well known in her neighborhood in Elmont that local leaders want to name a street after her.

On Saturday, Garnett’s family and friends will help her celebrate her 103rd birthday at her home on Carnegie Avenue. Ever since she came to Elmont 66 years ago, she has been in love with the neighborhood, and has refused to move.

“She was always looking to improve her community,” said Claudine Hall, president of the Jamaica Square Improvement League, of which Garnett has been a longtime member. “She was always concerned about the community and the people around her.”

Hall said that her chief goal was to name Carnegie Avenue after Garnett, and she has been working with officials from the Town of Hempstead and Nassau County to make it become a reality. “Everyone in the community knows her, and my lifelong goal as a civic leader is to have that street named after her,” said Hall. “I have a lot of goals as civic leader, but that’s my main goal. I don’t want to wait for her to be deceased.”

Hall described Garnett as an “all-around beautiful, spiritual person. She’s loved by all.”

Garnett was born in Willington, S.C., on Nov. 6, 1907, and married her husband, William, on Dec. 19, 1928. With their two children, they moved to Elmont in 1941, because William, a longtime janitor, accepted a position there. They went on to have three more children.

Garnett’s daughter, Evelyn Edwards, said her mother was a homemaker all her life. “My dad always wanted her to stay home and raise the children,” said Edwards, 69, who was 4 months old when her parents relocated. “She also helped raise some neighborhood kids in Elmont.”

The Garnetts’ three other children were born at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, which was then called Meadowbrook Hospital.

In the mid-1940s, Berthenia joined the Emanuel Baptist Church. It was the beginning of a long relationship: She served as an active member of the Deaconess Board, the Missionary Circle, the Flower Circle as well as the choir until her health declined.

The Garnett family moved from Plainfield Avenue to Carnegie Avenue in 1967.