The New York Post went after the world's most famous fisherwoman, Virginia Ginny Oliver, who just celebrated her 104th birthday with her favorite chocolate cake. "I'm going to the sea again this year," she declared. "I'm still the boss."
Cover photo: GETTY IMAGES-JOSEPH PREZIOSO-AFP
The story
We had already told the story of Lady Lobster, born Virginia Ginny Oliver, a legendary lobster fisherwoman who achieved planetary fame thanks to a children's book entitled precisely "The Lobster Lady," authored by Barbara Walsh, and Wayne Gray's documentary Conversations with the Lobster Lady. Born in 1920 on the same street where she still lives, she married a fisherman and raised four others, never losing control of the boat. "I'm always the boss," she jokes.
It all began at the outbreak of the Great Depression, says the New York Post, following which she was called upon to contribute to the family budget, working alongside her fisherman father. It was a business she never stopped practicing until her final years, going out to sea with her 80-year-old son Max three days a week, waking up at 3:30 AM, to empty 400 traps and sell the spoils, delivered by van to the store. "I enjoy working with my son. I am an independent woman ," she claimed.
Renewing her license from time to time, Virginia has never thought of lowering the nets. "I have to keep going. I want to do it until I die. I've never been seasick ," she stated. Well the legendary angler turned 104 last June 6, and celebrated her birthday with her family in Rockland, where she is considered a celebrity, with her favorite chocolate cake accompanied by a scoop of ice cream. Reportedly, she does not feel old at all, despite the fact that a few more aches and pains have arisen in recent years. "No one willingly listens to complaints."
As for finally retiring, she is not even thinking about it: she will spend the incipient summer filling her coffers with fine shellfish. "I will make it," she declared. For her, who began fishing at just 8 years old in the same waters with her father, it will be the ninety-sixth season at sea, in the company, as always, of the inseparable Max. The nine-meter-long boat bears her name after all: "Virginia." She drives it, but she also devotes herself to measuring crustaceans and tying claws. And if she occasionally gets bitten, patience. "There's no point in complaining."
