Christine Stokes Boyd of Jacksonville, Florida, formerly of Gloucester, celebrated her 100th birthday on Saturday.
A native of Gloucester County, Boyd studied at the Bena-Hayes School and graduated from the Gloucester Training School in 1941. She married, moved to Philadelphia after World War II, training and working as a cosmetologist, and also working as a bank’s bookkeeper for more than 16 years.
She returned to Gloucester in the early 1990s with her second husband and operated a beauty shop in her garage until the early 2000s.
She has always been active, keeping up with the cosmetology profession and her church. In Gloucester, she was a faithful member of the First Baptist Church, Ordinary. For a 1997 Gazette-Journal interview, she said her greatest concern was “Leading people to Christ and keeping families together, to encourage them to remain families, and to show more love.”
She is devout in her faith and visited the Holy Land in 1978, and said, “I just felt so different to walk...