On Saturday, December 2nd 2017, former Princeton resident Brenda Mary Davies celebrated her 100th birthday on November 26, 2017, with twenty friends and family at Pennswood Village retirement community in Newtown, Pa. Brenda, née Deakin, born in Birmingham, England, in 1917, received a centenarian congratulation letter from Buckingham Palace with a photograph and the signature of Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II. Brenda’s three children – Christine, Hugh and Philip – accompanied by three of her grandchildren and two nieces who flew over from England for the occasion, led the toasts and birthday salutations.
Brenda Mary Davies passed away peacefully on May 10th. Her former husband, Horton Marlais Davies, had himself passed on May 11, 2005. The couple had emigrated from Oxford, England in January 1956, when Horton had accepted a professorship in the Department of Religion at Princeton University where he taught until his retirement in 1984. The couple divorced in 1972.
Brenda, a graduate of Froebel training in England, taught kindergarten for several years at the former Miss Mason’s School on Bayard Lane, Princeton. According to her wishes, her body was donated to Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. The family asked that any memorial gifts be sent to Pennswood Village, 1382 Newtown-Langhorn Road, Newtown, PA 18940.
