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Gladys Kennedy was resigned to spending her 100th birthday quietly, alone in isolation in her room at the Victoria Estates Retirement Residence in Regina.
That was until she heard bagpipe music coming from outside.
Regina Legion vice-president Ron Hitchcock happens to be a piper and he turned up Tuesday to play a birthday tribute for Kennedy from the parking lot because she happens to be a veteran.
“I felt that it was more than I needed — more than I not only needed but deserved,” Kennedy said in a phone interview with 980 CJME.
The bagpipe tribute did bring back memories for Kennedy of enlisting in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps during the Second World War.
“I worked in the medical records department of the military hospital in Maple Creek,” Kennedy explained.
She hopes this small recognition of her own service helps people remember the rest of her generation who served in the armed forces and sacrificed so much more.
After all she has seen and lived through in her life, Gladys admits the COVID-19 pandemic is still a strange new struggle.
“This is something different than anything we experienced back then,” she said.
Her son, Harlan Kennedy, lives across the street and helped arrange the whole thing to surprise his mother, who was a bit disappointed her daughter couldn’t fly out for the occasion.
Bagpipe music rang out across the parking lot of the Queen Victoria Estates Retirement Residence in Regina, marking the 100th birthday of Gladys Kennedy who served in the Women’s Army Corps in WW2. pic.twitter.com/sWPBskqmQF
— Adriana Christianson (@AdrianaC_JME) April 8, 2020