HAMBURG, N.J. (AP) - A simple birthday wish for 105 birthday cards to celebrate her 105th birthday today, has been answered about 40 times over, with lifetime Sussex County resident Helen Kaposi receiving more than 4,100 cards from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and locations around the world.
Within two days of the initial request on Jan. 30 on the From the Heart Elder Care Facebook Page, Kaposi received her first 105. Afterward, the request went viral on Facebook and media outlets, including Spanish-speaking publications, reported on Kaposi’s request. Within days, the post had already reached 12,000 people, who had shared it 160 times.
“I never in a million years thought that my Facebook post would go this viral, I really was just hoping for 105 cards,” said Amy Torres, marketing representative of From the Heart Elder Care. “It has been absolutely amazing. So heartwarming to see thousands of people from all over the world take time out of their day to go out and buy a card to make Helen’s birthday a special one.”
Torres said international cards have come in so far from England, Ireland, France, Canada, Germany and Australia. Others have also stopped into the facility’s office in Vernon, with gifts for Kaposi. A teacher from Pinelands Regional Junior High in Little Egg Harbor drove 2.5 hours to hand-deliver cards from his students; and members of the Vernon Township Police Department hand-delivered a card on behalf of the department, Torres said.
Kaposi started opening a few of the cards in advance of her birthday, her sparkling blue eyes still able to pore over the handwritten messages without the regular use of glasses, though she keeps a pair of readers nearby in case she needs them. Handmade cards from school children and a special Certificate of Recognition from the Sussex County Board of Chosen Freeholders, have been among her prized birthday treasures.
On Feb. 19, the freeholders presented the certificate and card, as well as cards from county employees and 300 students from the school where Freeholder Deputy Director Dawn Fantasia serves as principal. Though Kaposi was not at the meeting, Linda Esposito of From the Heart Elder Care, which began assisting the independent Kaposi in 2019, received the gifts from the freeholders on her behalf.
“This is extremely special and we’re happy to be a part of this wonderful birthday celebration for Helen Kaposi,” Freeholder Director Sylvia Petillo told Esposito during the freeholder meeting. “Please wish her (Kaposi) our best and tell her we love her.”
Esposito adoringly refers to Kaposi as “The Last of the Mohicans.” In the Facebook post about her birthday wish, Torres referred to Kaposi’s landmark 105 years as “the new 80.”
Born at her family’s home near Hamburg’s quarry on Feb. 28, 1915, about five years before Hamburg formed officially as a borough in 1920 from sections of Hardyston, outside of leisure getaways, Kaposi firmly planted her roots within the municipality over these last 105 years.
It was the devotion to her community and her family, including her parents, three sisters, brother and eventually her husband Gary Kaposi - all of whom she outlived - that kept Helen Kaposi in Hamburg for more than a century.
Born in the middle of World War I and Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, a month after “Typhoid Mary” was arrested and sentenced to a lifetime of quarantine, a few weeks after the premiere of D.W. Griffith’s controversial silent film “The Birth of a Nation,” a few months before Red Sox Pitcher Babe Ruth hit his first career home run and the same year as the RMS Lusitania sinking, Kaposi marvels at how different life was in her early years versus 2020.
“It (life) was a lot slower,” Kaposi said.
When reflecting on the technological evolution she has witnessed, born before before the invention of television and now watching a cell phone with wonder as school children deliver their video birthday wishes to her through it, Kaposi is amazed.
“It’s (technology) a big change,” she said.
When Kaposi was a small child in Sussex County, her family’s home did not yet have electricity. She remembers many farms in the county in those days; and although she said her parents were not farmers, they owned chickens and cows. Family was also important to her, she said, with recollections of taking care of her mother, one of her sisters and her husband. The couple wed in 1935 and was married for 63 years.
She still holds fond memories of trips with her husband to Hawaii, Europe and Mexico, with their trip to Hawaii in 1968 - less than a decade after it became a state - still prominent in her memory.
The couple, who had no children, built their home in Hamburg. They owned a gas station in the borough on Route 23, a destination where motorists could also fill up on soft-serve ice cream.
Kaposi continued to drive her car until she was 99, stopping only at her nephew’s insistence, she said. She has lived independently throughout her lifetime, with From the Heart Elder Care enabling Kaposi to live the self-reliant life she has enjoyed over the years, Esposito said.
“She (Kaposi) is strong-willed at 105 and completely clear-minded,” Esposito said.
Kaposi said she still likes venturing out to church, for ice cream and to her favorite restaurant, the Lafayette House. On most days, she has a scheduled routine for meals, naps and times to relax in her favorite chair.
In sticking to her routine and with the public excitement over her 105th birthday, she has turned down interviews, visitors and even an opportunity to participate in a centenarian-only genealogy project presented to her.
“She is very private,” Esposito said.
The fanfare created on social media for her birthday differs from her 100th birthday when she celebrated with the Hardyston Seniors at the Littell Community Center in Franklin among family, friends and government officials. The Hardyston Seniors treated Kaposi to a pizza party and cake for her 102nd birthday. For today’s 105th, Kaposi will celebrate out of the limelight, with those closest to her.
However, Kaposi is thrilled to incorporate into her upcoming daily routine time to quietly read the thousands of birthday cards she has received from 90 different schools, Scout troops and hospitals; and other organizations and individuals.
“This (receiving all of these cards) is fabulous, just fabulous,” she said.
“People say the world has gone mad and there is so much hatred out there, this is proof that there is plenty of love and kindness left out there; and the world is a beautiful place,” Torres said.
According to the “Guinness Book of World Records,” Kane Tanaka of Japan, born in January 1903 is the world’s oldest living person and female at 117. Guinness reported Jeanne Calment of France, another supercentenarian - or an individual who has reached at least 110 - previously held the known record, having lived more than 122 years, from 1875 to 1997.
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