May Fazackerley celebrates 103rd birthday at Belong Wigan

May Fazackerley has celebrated her 103rd birthday at Belong Wigan. For the past three years May has been visited with cake on her birthday by 10-year-old Daisy May Calderbank, from St Benedict's Primary School, who shares May's birthday and name. To help celebrate the occasion, the Belong at Home team, who support May to live independently in her own apartment, serenaded her while she blew out her candles.
Born in Edinburgh in 1912, May went on holiday to the Isle of Man in 1938, where she met her husband, a railway engine driver. The two moved to Beech Hill, in Wigan, in 1939, so that he could drive a steam train between Wigan and Carlisle, but when the war broke out in September of the same year, their lives changed again.
“The rationing was hard,” May said of the time, “and the war was very restrictive. We weren’t allowed to have any lights on at night. People were a lot happier then though, because we all knew that we were in the same boat.”
For eight months during the war, May worked in a munitions factory, making small bullets for aircrafts. After her daughter, Barbara, was born in 1943, May stayed at home to take care of her, and didn’t work again until Barbara was 11 years old, at which point she started working in the returns department for the John England catalogue.
Over the course of her life, May has had a daughter, a stepson, three grandchildren and six great grandchildren. May’s daughter and her husband ran an engineering business together, which meant that May got to spend a lot of time with her grandchildren as they grew up, a period that she very much enjoyed.
Belong Wigan General Manager, Gill Menguy, said: "It was an honour to help May celebrate her 103rd birthday and reminisce on a life that has seen so many changes. We're very fortunate that May has chosen to make Belong Wigan her home and hope that she'll enjoy many more happy birthdays in the village."