The fam­i­ly of Oc­tavia Soo Hon pro­vid­ed her with a dis­play of mu­si­cal tal­ent when they gath­ered at the home of one of her four sons in St Au­gus­tine for her 100th birth­day par­ty on Jan­u­ary 27. Known by el­ders in the fam­i­ly as "Tavy," Oc­tavia was born at Ryan Street, San Juan, to sad­dle-mak­er Paul Durieux and his wife, Marie, on Jan­u­ary 27, 1912. She is the on­ly sur­viv­ing child of the cou­ple's six off­spring. To­day, she re­mains a reg­u­lar church­go­er, dai­ly read­er of the Bible and an avid ex­po­nent of the art of cro­chet. At her birth­day par­ty, she al­so dis­played a con­tin­u­ing abil­i­ty to car­ry a tune.

Three gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­ly in­clud­ing two sons, Chung and An­tho­ny, and daugh­ter, Fran­cis­ca, ser­e­nad­ed her in song. There were al­so mu­si­cal per­for­mances by grand­chil­dren An­ton and Alkim Chai Hong, Lind­say Gib­bings, Maria Soo Hon and Jeanette Moti­lal-Boodoo and great grand­chil­dren Mandy Go­sine and Mikhail Gib­bings. Oc­tavia's on­ly great great-grand­daugh­ter, Jae­da Nicholls, was al­so in at­ten­dance. The evening's MC was Oc­tavia's daugh­ter-in-law, Jus­tice Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon, who de­liv­ered a live­ly sup­ply of fam­i­ly jokes. Oc­tavia mar­ried Chi­nese im­mi­grant, George Yen Soo Hon in the 1930s. Their son, Gre­go­ry, cur­rent­ly lives and works in his fa­ther's an­ces­tral province of Guang­dong in South Chi­na. He flew in for the cel­e­bra­tions with his wife, Cheryl, and chil­dren Alex and Dag­ny.

Oc­tavia and George bore nine chil­dren: Shirley Gib­bings (who died in 1995), Chung, Don­ald, Daphne Nar­ine, Ma­ri­na Moti­lal, Fran­cis­ca Chai Hong, An­tho­ny, Gre­go­ry and Fran­cis. She at­trib­ut­es her longevi­ty to prayer and a healthy lifestyle. She was born the very month of the birth of the African Na­tion­al Con­gress in South Africa, two years af­ter the in­tro­duc­tion of the first mo­tor­car to Trinidad and be­fore the First and Sec­ond World Wars. To­day, she com­mu­ni­cates with over­seas rel­a­tives on Skype and en­joys the com­pa­ny of the younger chil­dren in the fam­i­ly whose names she re­mem­bers ef­fort­less­ly. She is the grand­moth­er of free­lance jour­nal­ist, Wes­ley Gib­bings, who writes for the Trinidad & To­ba­go Guardian.