Highton’s Patricia Overbeck celebrates 100th birthday

A Highton woman has celebrated her 100th birthday, surrounded by five generations of her family.

Happy birthday: Patricia Overbeck celebrates her 100th birthday with great-great- granddaughters, five-year-old twins Evie and Frankie. Picture: Mark Wilson.

A Highton woman has celebrated her 100th birthday, surrounded by five generations of her family.

Patricia Overbeck was born in 1924 and turned 100 on Thursday, February 15.

She and husband, Ross Overbeck, who sadly died in 2007, had two children, 11 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren and 7 great-great-grandchildren, with one more on the way.

Mrs Overbeck lives with dementia and now resides at a retirement village in Highton but her daughter, Barbara Ward, said she has been in good health.

“As a youngster, she developed polio when she was three,” Mrs Ward said.

“She was in calipers until she was about 12.”

Mrs Ward said her mum would “do anything for anybody”.

“She never thought she would make it to 100,” she said.

“She loves her family.

“She is very determined and hard working.”

Mr Overbeck was a pastry chef and the family owned a bakery in Melbourne.

“We lived at the shop and mum would go down at 5am to help dad in the bakehouse,” Mrs Ward said.

“Then at about 7am, she would come back up to the house and get my sister and I ready for school before heading back to the shop to work.

“She has been the backbone of the whole family.”

Mrs Overbeck’s granddaughter, Faith Bennett, said her grandmother was “loving and kind” but would also be “very stern”.

“If you wanted to get away with something, you would go to grandpa not (grandma),” she said.

“She has a heart of gold.”

Mrs Overbeck celebrated the milestone with a party on Saturday with five generations of her family.

Originally published as Highton’s Patricia Overbeck celebrates 100th birthday