So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Don­na Cox is urg­ing na­tion­als to take care of their health so they can live longer and have pro­duc­tive lives, like Leono­ra Web­ster.

Cox was at the time speak­ing to the me­dia on Thurs­day when she paid a vis­it to cen­te­nar­i­an Leono­ra Web­ster at her Freeport home.

Web­ster cel­e­brat­ed her 100 birth­day on Sep­tem­ber 10 and held cel­e­bra­tions on Sep­tem­ber 16.

Web­ster, who has been blind since she was 84 years old has one son Earl Bernard, 79, and an adopt­ed daugh­ter Mau­reen Mort­ley, 64. She moved from Port-of-Spain to Cen­tral and lives at Mort­ley’s house at Main­got Trace.

Web­ster said the se­cret to her longevi­ty is do­ing things in mod­er­a­tion and prayer.

"I was not a dancer and I went to a par­ty now and then. Af­ter work I would take a rest, when I eat, I eat in mod­er­a­tion. You don’t over­do any­thing. I al­ways say I live a full life, full­ness is a lit­tle bit of every­thing, the good, the bad, the sad, the glad, the joy, the sor­row but God was al­ways with me.”

Web­ster de­scribed her­self as a God-fear­ing woman who grew up fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of pray­ing dai­ly that was set by her moth­er. “As you grow old­er you get to un­der­stand God bet­ter, un­der­stand His ways and what He wants you to do.”

Web­ster’s mem­o­ries go way back in­to the 20th cen­tu­ry, as she wit­nessed many his­tor­i­cal events.

She re­called the jail­ing of trade union­ist Tubal Uri­ah "Buzz" But­ler and the shoot­ing of Char­lie King. Web­ster said when Trinidad and To­ba­go gained in­de­pen­dence she was in Venezuela where she and oth­er na­tion­als cel­e­brat­ed.

Her adopt­ed daugh­ter heaped praised on Web­ster and said she in­stilled deep re­li­gious val­ues in her and had been an ex­cel­lent par­ent.

Min­is­ter Cox al­so sang the cen­te­nar­i­an's prais­es and said she was an ex­am­ple of what younger cit­i­zens should as­pire to be.

“This is what we want to see, per­sons liv­ing longer, hav­ing healthy lifestyles, eat­ing right and hav­ing pro­grammes for them so they will be stress-free.”

Cox said peo­ple who live to be 100 usu­al­ly have a healthy di­et that con­tains com­plex car­bo­hy­drates and are free from fast, oily foods. She said those want­i­ng to live a longer life should ex­er­cise and pray more to re­lieve stress.