A Life Well Lived: Hampton Bays Resident Sylvia Catena Smith To Turn 100

Six months ago, for Sylvia Catena Smith, the countdown to centenarian began.

As of Monday morning, she had just nine days to go.

“People say, ‘Why do you want to live to be 100?’” the 99-year-old said from her home in Hampton Bays. “It’s so that I can tell my children that I lived to be 100 — and so they can say, ‘My mother was 100 when she died.’”

Her daughter, Sharon McGann, interjected.

“So I said, ‘Oh, okay, Mom. That means the day after your birthday, we can get rid of you?’” she recalled with a laugh. “She said, ‘Oh no, I’m not ready to go yet.’”

On Wednesday, September 11, Smith — whose mind and wit defies age — will celebrate her 100th birthday, first with a ceremony at the Hampton Bays Elementary School, followed later by dinner at a family favorite, Villa Paul.

“I’m very excited,” she said of the upcoming milestone. “I’ve had a lot of life.”

Born in 1924 and raised in Hampton Bays, Smith still lives on the property where she grew up with her four siblings, she said. It was a dirt road then, she said, with very little traffic.

“We used to ride on the back of the grader, until my mother discovered tar on our white stockings — and the girls didn’t wear pants in those days, we just wore white stockings,” she said. “It was fun! But it wasn’t fun anymore when Mom found out.”

She attended Sacred Hearts Parochial School in Southampton until eighth grade and ultimately graduated from Hampton Bays High School, class of 1942, as its valedictorian.

“Well, it was exciting,” she said, “but to look back now, we only had 19 in the class.”

During high school, she first crossed paths with Francis “Smitty” Smith. It wasn’t love at first sight, she said — but when he returned in August 1946 from serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, they met again.

And he stuck.

By that following April, they were married and, together, raised three children — David Smith, Sylvia Peixotto and McGann — who all also graduated from Hampton Bays High School.

“We used to call my father the Energizer Bunny, but my mother has taken over his position because he died five years ago,” McGann said. “He was 97, and he worked at the Boardy Barn until he was probably 94.”

Smith herself worked for many years in the Southampton Town Clerk’s office and at the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office in Riverhead as a senior-level bookkeeper and supervisor. She is a charter member of the Catholic Daughters of America and still an active member of the Hampton Bays American Legion Auxiliary.

And until she was just shy of 80, she played the organ for St. Rosalie’s Catholic Church — starting at age 12 and continuing for 67 years.

She misses that part of her life, she explained, and fills her time playing cards, listening to audiobooks — her genre of choice is old-time romances, her daughter said — and watching television when the mood strikes, macular degeneration aside.

“She used to love to watch ‘Wheel of Fortune’ with my dad,” McGann said. “Everybody loves ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ and she can’t see the letters on a TV like she used to. So that kind of puts a downer on things.”

“But I watch it, anyway,” her mother said.

“Yes, you do watch it,” her daughter responded.

Smith’s live-in caretaker — hired only after a fall in November 2022, at age 98 — brings her for a daily walk to the mailbox or, if the weather is prohibitive, back and forth on the covered porch.

“I feel well, except I resent having to stay all by myself all day long, just thinking about what I did in the past and what I’d like to do in the present,” she said. “When my caretaker takes me outdoors — we have lovely gardens — I still want to pull weeds and do the work that I used to do before I fell. That’s life.”

Without deadpanning, Smith acknowledges how sharp she still is — couching it with the fact that she is a nonagenarian — and recalls memories with astonishing detail.

“But there are times when Sharon remembers better than I do,” she said, “and she corrects me.”

Smith attributes her long life to staying active in the community, steering clear of drugs and alcohol — “I lived a real clean life,” she said — and surrounding herself with family, including six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren today.

She is quick to laugh and share, and speaks candidly about the days to come. When asked what she thinks about making it to 101, Smith was blasé at best.

Matter-of-factly, she simply said, “I don’t care” — her smirk nearly palpable through the phone.