The State - News from Dec. 9, 1988

Gertrude Palmer, who will celebrate her 105th birthday Saturday, has been named California’s “Senior Adult Student of the Year.” Palmer, who smokes a pipe and drinks a daily bottle of stout, was nominated by the Grossmont Adult School in La Mesa and selected from among 100 nominees by the California State Consortium for Adult Education. Each Thursday, Palmer boards a van for the short trip from her board-and-care home to a local community center, where she is enrolled in a class on “Effective Living Skills for Seniors.” Palmer, who was born in England, knits without glasses, needs no hearing aid and only occasionally uses a cane to walk. She said she owed her long life to “religion, family and Guiness stout.”