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Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ still going strong at 101

By Bob D'Angelo, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

Maine's Lobster Lady Virginia Oliver is 101 years old, but the Maine resident still goes lobstering three times a week. (Woodkern/iStock)

By Bob D'Angelo, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

ROCKLAND, Maine — A Maine woman has spent nearly a century trapping lobsters, and at 101 years old, she still prefers a rocking boat to a rocking chair.

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Virginia Rackliff Oliver is awake before dawn three days a week, May through December, CBS News reported. She works on Penobscot Bay, putting out lobster pots as she has since the late 1920s, when she was 8 years old and helped her older brother in Rockland, according to WCSH.

“They call me the Lobster Lady,” Oliver told the television station.

Oliver turned 101 on June 6, according to online Maine vital records. Oliver works 200 pots with her son, Max Oliver, hauling them out of the water while she bands the lobsters, WCSH reported.

Recently, Virginia Oliver was cut so badly while working that she needed seven stitches, according to CBS News.

“And the doctor said to me, ‘What are you out there lobstering for?’” Oliver told the network. “And I said, ‘Because I want to.’”

If the doctor had misgivings about the centenarian being injured, he kept them to himself. Virginia Oliver would have ignored him.

“Well, I don’t care what he thought,” she told CBS News.

Virginia Oliver grew up in Rockland and lives on the same street where her parents, Alvin Rackliff and Julia Buttomer Rackliff, resided for many years, WCSH reported.

Her father lobstered and fished for sardines to sell to the local factory, the television station reported.

When she is finished on the boat, Virginia Oliver waits for her 78-year-old son to catch up.

A member of the Rockland Historial Society made a short documentary about Virginia Oliver several years ago, according to WCSH.

Max Oliver attributes his mother’s work ethic to her long and healthy life, and she said she enjoys having her independence. When she is done, Virginia Oliver drives her white pickup truck to the grocery store.

“You just have to keep going; otherwise, you would be in a wheelchair or something,” Virginia Oliver told WCSH.

When not lobstering, Oliver can be found baking doughnuts, cakes and brownies in her kitchen.

“I usually bake beans on Saturday and (my kids) come for supper,” she told the television station.

Virginia Oliver said she has no plans to stop lobstering any time soon.

“When I die,” she told WCSH. “Everybody gonna die sometime. You’re not gonna live forever, so why let it bother you?”



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