Elsie Reed isn’t quite our oldest reader but she is close to it – and one of the most loyal.
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The East Maitland woman will turn 90 in July and has read the Mercury continuously for about 80 years.
“I can remember reading it at age 10,” Ms Reed said.
“The features and kids’ pages are what I was most interested in.”
The paper has documented both happy and sad moments in her life.
The darkest time was her father’s death at Bloomfield colliery near East Maitland in 1938 when she was 12.
“He was in the Mercury when he died,” she said.
“Dad was a miner so the Mercury was number one in our house [and] the paper had a lot to do with miners.”
During WWII Ms Reed worked in the munitions factory at Rutherford and after 1945 at Bradford cotton mills.
When Ms Reed was a young adult the Mercury published a tips and hints section with a prize of two and six pence. “I had five or six hints published,” she said. “They were mostly to do with dress making or cleaning.”
Ms Reed credits her youthful looks to never being married and has been a faithful church goer all her life.
She was born in 1924 and was christened at the East Maitland Methodist Church, which stood on the corner of Williams Street and Newcastle Road.
The Mercury reported the demolition of the church on July 12, 1937 and named Ms Reed as a choir member and she kept the clippings as a reminder.
“I’ve been in the choir since I was 10,” she said, now involved with the Uniting Church. “[But] we haven’t had an organist for the past two years.”
Ms Reed now resides at the Green Hills Lodge and continues to receive the Mercury.
“I bring it up to my room to read it,” she said.
Her tidy room includes photos of loved ones and keepsakes while neatly stacked on her private balcony is the Mercury.
“It gives you all the news,” she said.