Josephine A. Farnella (Josie) is turning 100 years old on Sunday, at the Heritage Green Rehab and Skilled Nursing home, located at 3023 Route 430 , Greenhurst. Submitted photo

GREENHURST – Josephine A. Farnella (Josie) is turning 100 years old on Sunday – and she’s just now peaking.

However, for the soon to be century-old, retired, registered nurse, who currently resides at the Heritage Green Rehab and Skilled Nursing Home, located at 3023 Route 430 celebrating her birthday with family and friends is just par for the course.

Michelle Buttafaro, Josie’s nieces said that her aunt was born March 10, 1925, she never married and had no children of her own, but she has a combined total of five nieces and nephews; 11 great-nieces and nephews and 11 great-great-nieces and nephews.

Additionally, Buttafaro added that her aunt graduated from Jamestown High School in 1943, then graduated from the Millard Fillmore Nursing school, in Buffalo in 1946.

“Caring for her patients, her faith and her family was and is her life,” Buttafaro said.

Buttafaro pointed out more historically-intriguing facts regarding her 99-years old aunt.

“My aunt was one of the first nurses in the United States to care for patients confined to an iron-lung for those afflicted with the polio disease,” she said.

According to britannica.com, iron lungs are used to maintain respiration in persons who are unable to breathe on their own. An iron lung.. Historically, the iron lung was used for patients affected by paralysis caused by polio; many such patients were unable to breathe on their own. After the early 1950s, following the introduction of the polio vaccine, use of the iron lung declined, and today it is considered obsolete.

“My aunt said she was trained to assist polio patients who needed the use of the iron lung to breathe. This was before the vaccine was available in 1955,” said Buttafaro.

Buttafaro recalled her aunt’s professional life, prior to her retirement in 1984.

“She worked in private medical practices, WCA, (now the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center – UPMC) and then did 30 years with the United States Veterans Administration Buffalo Medical Center, before retiring after 30 years of services there,” added Buttafaro. “She lived the way she believed; faith is extremely important to her, as is serving and helping others. She was that ‘cool aunt’, taking us to the movies, celebrating birthday parties – she loves her family.”

Buttafaro said that Sunday, Josie will be surrounded by friends, family and loved ones to help her usher in a centennial’s worth of living at her aunt’s retirement home, a residence she took up not too long ago.

“I think she was 96 before she moved in and out of her apartment on Howard Avenue,” she said.

However, Josie is joining a club of centenarians who are a growing demographic in the United States.

Pewresearch.org said, the number of centenarians in the United States has steadily ticked up since 1950, when the Census Bureau estimates there were just 2,300 Americans ages 100 and older. (The Census Bureau uses calculated estimates for years prior to the 1990 census because it has identified large errors in the census counts of centenarians for those years.) In the last three decades alone, the U.S. centenarian population has tripled. The 1990 census counted around 37,000 centenarians in the country; In 2024, 78% of centenarians were women, and 22% are men. In 30 years, women are expected to make up 68% of those ages 100 and older, while 32% will be men.

When Josie was asked what was her secret to living a long and fulfilling life, she replied, “by living the will of God.”