Marjorie is a dancing queen who graces the halls of her Residential Care home

“Dancing has kept me going - the movement and the people, it’s very sociable.” That’s the secret to a long life according to centenarian Marjorie Thomas - keep dancing. At 100 years old Marjorie has many fond memories of dancing. 

Born in Torrensville, Adelaide in 1924, Marjorie had a brother and two sisters and her father worked at the train station at Islington.

She finished school at Therbarton and took up an apprenticeship as a milliner, making hats for children and later for college, until WWII began and hats were no longer affordable. 

Throughout her adolescence Marjorie loved to go ballroom dancing with friends, later spending some time as a teacher as well, and remembers the girls wearing summer dresses because they couldn’t afford ballroom gowns. 

All their wartime coupons had to be saved up for things like tea towels to go in their glory boxes, so the girls made their own dresses, but it helped having short dresses anyway because it made it easier for Marjorie to see if they were putting a foot wrong in the dance steps. 

Marjorie’s husband Arthur, who everyone called Ray, was her long term dance partner as well as her life partner. 

They also taught dancing together, as Marjorie fondly remembers, “Ray had a voice like a foghorn - he could bellow at all the men what they had to do - step left or step right - I couldn’t yell at them like that because they wouldn’t have come back”. 

Marjorie met Ray on a train from Adelaide to Gawler; he was travelling with his cousin and she was accompanied by one of her girlfriends and they simply hit it off. 

Ray went to war for four years and Marjorie wrote to him religiously, as she knew how important it was for him to receive letters from home. 

When Ray was discharged from the army the couple married, but they continued to live with Ray’s mother for 18 months until they welcomed their first child, then moved in with Marjorie’s mother. 

Although Marjorie and Ray had a house at Prospect, the manufacturing of tiles and roof iron had halted around the war time and they had to wait a whole year before they could put a roof on the house and make it livable. 

Marjorie and Ray, who also lived past 100 years old, lived together for a time at The Philip Kennedy Centre Residential Care until Ray passed away recently. 

Family is still important to Marjorie and one of the great joys of her life today is hearing about what her five children, nine grandchildren and one great grandchild are doing. 

To read about more of the celebrated centenarians in the Southern Cross Care Community, click here.