Celebrating 100 years

On Feb. 19, 50 friends and relatives of long-time Rockville Centre resident Marian (Mim) O’Sullivan gathered at the Irish Village on Cape Cod to celebrate her 100th birthday.

O’Sullivan was born on Feb. 25, 1916 in Beach, North Dakota. When she was 10 years old, her mother passed away and she was sent to live with her aunt on a ranch in eastern Montana. It was there that she learned the art of quilt-making, how to ride horses, tend cattle and shoot a gun. She went to school in a one-room school house three miles from the ranch. During the warmer weather, she rode her horse, but during the harsh winter months she skied or used snowshoes to get to school.  

Once World War II started, O’Sullivan traveled to Seattle, Wash. in 1942 to find work in a defense factory, but instead enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. In July of 1943, when Congress established the Women’s Army Corps, O’Sullivan decided to continue serving her country and became regular army.

O’Sullivan was first stationed at Truax Field in Wisconsin, where she worked in the Post Locator Office before being transferred to Stone, England. It was here that she met her husband, Technical Sergeant Frank O’Sullivan, from Brooklyn.  

After the war, the couple were married in Wibaux, Mont. before moving east and settling in Brooklyn.As their family grew, the couple moved first to Queens, before settling in Rockville Centre, where they found their dream home on Roxbury Road.