A carrot cake from Draeger's and Chinese food are in order for Atherton resident Patricia Robertson's 100th birthday today, April 24.

Robertson had planned to celebrate the occasion with a party of about 50 friends at her home, but because of the stay-at-home order the gathering will be smaller — just her husband of 77 years, Bill (who turns 99 on April 30), and her son Brad in their 113-year-old home.

"I was planning a great, big party and this virus (COVID-19) stopped that," said Robertson, who has lived on the Midpeninsula since the 1940s. She's hoping the party can still happen at a later date.

Born in Seattle in 1920, Robertson grew up in Berkeley. She wanted to leave the East Bay for college, but her parents insisted she attend University of California at Berkeley.

"My mother and father said, 'That's ridiculous, you have a beautiful college life here,'" when she told them she'd like to move away for college.

After a year, she decided college wasn't for her and entered the workforce. She started work at Federal Reserve Bank before landing a job at an advertising agency on the 25th floor of the Shell Building in San Francisco's Financial District.

She met Bill and they married when she was 22. She soon followed him back and forth from coast to coast during World War II. Bill served as an Army captain and was eventually stationed in the Philippines. During that time, she lived in Redwood City with her parents.

Move to Atherton

Using savings from Bill's time in the military, Patricia and Bill purchased a duplex in Menlo Park in the mid-1940s. They lived on one side and rented the other side to pay the mortgage.

In the early '50s, Patricia found a newspaper advertisement for a house near Atherton's civic center.

The house was an estate owned by the Smith family of San Francisco, who spent their summers on the Midpeninsula, Patricia said. On the property: a rose garden, greenhouse and fruit trees, but the Robertsons didn't want to be responsible for taking care of all those things, she noted.

"It looked so huge compared to what we were used to," she said. "I called a friend who was an accountant, said 'What do you think we should do? Should we buy this?' He said, 'If you don't buy it I'm going to.'"

The size of the home overwhelmed the couple at first, who frequently yelled "where are you?" to one another when they walked around the house.

The town has clearly changed quite a bit over the years, Patricia noted. Pear orchards have been replaced with more houses.

"There were only a couple of houses on our block (when we moved in); now the whole block is full of houses," she said.

Over the years, Patricia and Bill have traveled the world — Mexico, the Caribbean, Norway, France, China, Japan, Israel and elsewhere, but she thinks the Peninsula has the best climate of any place she's been.

"This weather is the best in the whole world — I can vouch for that because we've been to a lot of places," Patricia said.

The couple eventually had three children — Brad, Linda and Scott. Brad currently lives in a pool house on the property that the family converted into an apartment.

"Thank goodness he's around because we can't do anything for ourselves," she said, noting that he is taking care of the groceries now since the couple's caregiver is at high risk for contracting the virus since she has a heart condition.

Patricia still hopes to have the birthday celebration later in the year.

"I was looking forward to seeing a lot of people I hadn't seen for a long time," she said. "I was going to put on the invitations: 'No gifts — your presence is my gift.'"

Patricia has no advice on longevity and chalks her own up to good luck.

"Your guess is as good as mine," she said as to why she's lived a long life.

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