Lifelong resident celebrates 100 years

Florence Gear turned 100 years old on Feb. 23, celebrating with friends and neighbors in the Regent St. home she’s lived in since 1946.

“She had a penchant for small animals,” said her grandniece, Alice Gear, of New Hampshire. “She rescued them from all over.”

Gear’s kind hobby was known throughout Valley Stream, and residents would bring her any injured or lost animals before the days of wildlife clinics and animal hospitals.

Maureen Flynn Andersen grew up across the street. “The entire neighborhood knew about her ducks,” she remembered. “She had a whole family of possums living here. She always loved animals.”

Gear was a tireless gardener, known for her garden in front of her house, full of southwestern plants and cactuses that would bloom with brilliantly colored flowers once each year.

“It was very exotic,” Andersen said.

Gear brought back many of those plants from her extensive travels. With her younger sister, Mary, she bought an RV and traveled the U.S., also making it to Europe.

She was born in Brooklyn Hospital to parents who had immigrated from Wales. They brought her back there for her first years, and returning in 1920. Gear became active as a camp counselor and Girl Scout through the 1930’s, said her grandniece. Her father was an auto mechanic who worked on Teddy Roosevelt’s cars in New York City. There was one occasion where Roosevelt gave her father $10 — “a lot of money in those days” — which became an item of family folklore, Alice said.

Gear graduated from Central High School in 1933 and got the idea that she’d like to study physical education. She attended the Savage School in New York City, after which she got a job at the Garden City Park School.

“I found it to be boring,” Gear said, so she went back to school and studied early childhood education. She graduated in 1937 and returned to Valley Stream to teach kindergarten and second grade. She and Mary both retired in 1970, and Gear became highly active at Grace Methodist Church, where she organized and participated in craft fairs, knitting sessions and other activities. She also made regular donations to the Valley Stream Historical Society.