Eleanor Butterfield Dansereau has a reputation at Warwick Health Center where she has lived for the past several years of being a tease and coming up with the unexpected. She didn’t disappoint the scores of relatives, the staff members and even the mayor who turned out to celebrate her 100th birthday on Aug. 17. She was born Aug. 16, 1923, but the party at the center was delayed a day so that her daughter, Pat, who lives in Florida could fly in. 

She started the day declaring it was her 29th birthday but her knees were telling her she is 100. It only picked up from there. Wearing a birthday hat, seated beneath a sign announcing her birthday with balloons floating, Eleanor held court. Mayor Frank Picozzi slid into a chair beside her with a proclamation he intended on reading. He leaned over to explain who he was. Eleanor gave him a smile and then reached for a colorful noisemaker which she used to tweak Picozzi on the chin. When the Beacon photographer angled to get the shot, she blew the noisemaker at the lens. It was too good a shot to miss. He snapped the image. Her admirers cheered her on. A great-great grandchild joined in the fun blowing her noisemaker.

Eleanor never moved far from the house her father built in 1915 on Everleth Street in Warwick. She attended Warwick schools and graduated from Nelson Aldrich High School, Class of 1940. She then went to work in the office at Monowatt Electric where her father was the boss. Following her marriage to Raymond Dansereau, the couple built a house on Everleth Street not far from where she grew up and lived until moving into the Warwick Health Center in 2021. She lost her husband in 2001.

“She makes everyone laugh. She’s a spitfire,” said caretaker Melissa Merolli, who planned the party and arranged for a huge sheet cake with happy birthday Eleanor scrolled across the white frosting. The cake was not in sight as Picozzi talked with Eleanor and the two posed for pictures.  However, when she learned there would be cake she initiated the chant, “cake, cake, cake.” Melissa maneuvered a table bearing the cake through the crowd, stopping a few feet from Eleanor to light three candles on each of the three digits of 100. Eleanor reached for the cake, poking a finger into the vanilla icing for a sample. Then Picozzi helped direct as the cake was wheeled into position so she could blow out the candles. Melissa inquired how big a piece Eleanor wanted. The answer was “big.”  Melissa aimed for the spot where Eleanor sampled the frosting to cut a piece.

She realized her mistake when a slice of white cake emerged. Eleanor has a passion for chocolate, which was at the other end of the cake. “She got two pieces,” said Melissa.  Eleanor didn’t object.

It wasn’t the end of the celebrating, which was just fine by Eleanor. There was a second party at the house on Everleth Street on Sunday. There was no shortage of family. Eleanor is the mother of five children, grandmother of 12, great grandmother of 20 and great-great grandmother of five.