MIDDLEBORO - When Jeanne Freitas wheeled her mother Emily Sparkman into her 103rd birthday party, Sparkman greeted her extended family with a triumphant cry: “I’m still alive!” 

The party, held at Nemasket Healthcare Center on Sunday, Jan. 15, couldn’t have gone better. 

The chocolate cake was decorated with pink frosting, Sparkman’s favorite color, and white flowers made of icing. It was served with coffee ice cream, her favorite flavor. 

When Freitas asked the decorators to write the words “Happy 103rd Birthday” on the cake, they couldn’t believe it.

“Their mouths flew open,” Freitas said. “They were kind of astonished.”

Freitas said that writing all of the roles that Sparkman has played in her life — mother, grandmother, great grandmother — would have taken up too much space on the cake. 

Most of Sparkman’s family still lives in Middleboro, where she was born on Jan. 14, 1920. 

“It’s changed a lot,” she said about the town.

“Everybody has always said Emily is amazing,” Freitas said. “She’s always been active, socially and physically. She’s a real people person.” 

Sparkman is the first to admit that she’s “an old lady.” 

“I didn’t think you looked a day over 30,” her grandson Scott said. 

Sparkman was wearing fuzzy striped socks, pink and white just like her cake. 

“Are we gonna have some cake?” She asked her daughter.

98 years separated Sparkman from the youngest guest, her 5-year-old great granddaughter Brianna.

Her 16-year-old great grandson Brian, who still calls her Grammy, gave her a fresh rose.

She was grateful for the rose, but she didn’t have birthday presents on her mind that day. 

“I don’t need anything,” she said. “I’ve got it all. Just being with family.”

Her younger brother Leonard Garofalo, 89, lives two doors down from her at the Healthcare Center. She frequently goes past his room and waves, saying “Hi, Leonard!”

She still reminds him to comb his hair.

Whenever she does, Leonard’s daughter says: “Emily, he’s grown up now. You don’t have to boss him around anymore.”

At the party, she told Leonard that if he eats right and exercises like she did, he can live to be as old as her. 

“When you turn 104 next year,” Leonard’s wife Mary Jane said, “we’ll be back.”

Leonard and Emily grew up with their six siblings in a house with chickens and a vegetable garden. Their father was a chef and their mother worked in a shoe store, where Emily worked as a secretary after she graduated from Middleboro High School in 1938.

Emily said that her parents were strict, but she loved their Italian cooking, especially macaroni.

She met her husband Fred Sparkman at a dance at Camp Edwards. He fought in Germany during World War II, where he suffered an arm injury. Emily remembered his scar, and how she used to exchange letters with him while he was overseas.

They married in 1944, after he came back from the war. He died 30 years later at the age of 53. She never remarried. 

Emily was a stay-at-home mom to her four children until Fred’s death, when she took the civil service exam in Boston and got a perfect score. She worked for the unemployment office in Taunton. In her spare time, she enjoyed baking muffins and pies, and kept a garden.

“That garden was very fertile,” Freitas said. “She’d grow anything in that garden. It wasn’t very big, but she did it.” 

Emily retired in 1990.

“She said that she didn’t want anyone to know how old she was,” Freitas said, “so she decided to retire at 70.”

After retirement, Emily traveled to Italy to visit relatives. The only problem was that she didn’t speak Italian.

She drove and walked on her own until she was well into her 90s. Nowadays, she enjoys spending time with her friends and playing bingo. 

Other than a hip replacement, she proudly reports that she’s “all together.”

“I’ve had an interesting life,” she said. “I’ve had a full life.”

She made a wish and blew out her birthday candles. As “the lady of the hour,” she got to have the first piece of cake. She said it was delicious.