NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- The only birthday gift Laura Woolsey Lord Scales wanted was to be greeted by the rising sun.
She got her wish Monday, along with a 110th birthday party celebrated by friends, a state legislator and the prestigious college to which she was so attached.
'The sun is the most important part of my life,' said Scales, while celebrating her birthday by eating cake and sharing smiles with friends who visited with her at Rockridge Retirement Home in Northampton.
'I'm too tired to get up and thank everyone individually,' she told the gathering. Everyone seemed to understand.
Although Monday was her birthday, the celebration began a day earlier with a visit from Mary Maples Dunn, president of Smith College in Northampton. Scales is the oldest living alumna of the all-female school, which named a dormitory for her in 1936.
Scales, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa scholastic fraternity, also was the first 'warden' at Smith -- a position now called dean of students -- and served the college in that capacity from 1922 until her retirement in 1944.
She was born in Hanover, N.H., in 1879. Her father, John K. Scales, was a classics scholar who eventually became president of Dartmouth College. She received an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth in 1939, an honor Smith had already bestowed upon her, for her lifelong contributions in academia.
Among those honoring her was state Rep. William Nagle, who penned a resolution in her honor approved Monday by the Massachusetts Legislature. The document helped put Scales' life into perspective.
'Laura Lord Scales was born on November 13, 1879, at a time when Rutherford B. Hayes was president, Geronimo was on the warpath and F.W. Woolworth had open his first five and dime store,' the resolution states.
'It was nice, but I know it meant more to her when the sun came out,' said Dorothea Munro, the administrator at the retirement home who organized the party.
