Gonsalves celebrates 102nd birthday
North Fort Myers resident Gladys Gonsalves turned 102 years old this month, and celebrated the occasion surrounded by friends and family. That included several area law enforcement officials and health care professionals that said she was instrumental in shaping many of their lives.
Sgt. Dede Petracca is with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office Headquarters in downtown Fort Myers. She said Gonsalves’ positive influence on their family spanned several generations.
“She’s like a second grandmother to me, my grandmother lived to 100 and they lived together,” Petracca said. “Our family is huge, a big Portuguese Catholic family. Family is the most important thing, especially when we began to raise our own children. My daughter was already reading and writing before she went to school because of my grandmother and Aunt Gladys. They gave her that head start.”
North First Myers Deputy Jarrod Cantrell is her great nephew, who was honored as Deputy of the Month by the North Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce in September.
“She’s full of life, loved to bake for years and years, made the best cheesecake and baked cookies everyday,” he said. “It was like having an extra grandmother.”
Her baking is his best memory of her as a child and an adult.
“We’d come home and she’d have fresh baked cookies,” he said. “She was always there for us. She did things the old-fashioned way, she didn’t use a dishwasher or clothes washer, she did everything by hand.”
Gonsalves said she’s proud of all of her family, and was asked for her secret to long life.
“I have no secret — it’s just the Good Lord,” she said.
Niece and local nurse Teri Cantrell said, “She’s in excellent shape. She’s very healthy, and never went to a doctor until she was 100.”
Her only ailment is some rheumatoid arthritis, but Gonsalves said, “I feel good.”
Of favorite memories of growing up with her aunt, Teri said, “She’s get down on the floor with us and read to us.”
Gonsalves was part of a large immediate family herslf, with two other sisters and four brothers. She was born in a farm house in Little Compton, R.I., and moved to this area in 1975 with late husband, Manuel, who worked many years for Revere.
“She was the first in the family to be born in the U.S.,” said Teri. “Her parents came from the Acors on July 4, 1906. The first time my grandmother saw fireworks she was pregnant with her.”
She was born premature.
“My grandmother used to say they put her in a shoebox by the fire to keep her warm,” she said.
Through her life she’s loved to cook and travel.
“Baking was her passion,” said Teri. She also loved to travel, with memorable trips to Ireland and one car trip that went down the East Coast and then across the country to Califormia.
But the things she’s loved the most? “I love my family,” she said.