She did not diet or exercise regularly and on occasion would have an alcoholic beverage.

Despite not following conventional health wisdom, Winifred “Winnie” Dyer Barker lived for more than a century.

Mrs. Barker died Friday in Sarasota, Fla., where she had lived for the past 40 years. A native of Cumberland, she was 106 years old.

Mrs. Barker, who drove cancer patients to medical appointments when she was in her 80s, did not give up driving until she turned 94.

“You don’t live to be 106 unless you are stubborn,” said one of her daughters, Linda Barker of Vero Beach, Fla.

Mrs. Barker was born in Cumberland on Nov. 9, 1904, to Lemuel Webster Dyer and Julia Winslow Dyer. Her father worked at Sealtest Ice Cream in Portland as an ice cream flavor tester.

The family eventually moved from Cumberland to Portland. Mrs. Barker graduated from Deering High School.

After graduation, she worked as a teller for the former Maine Savings Bank.

Her sister, Dorothy Dyer Jackson, also worked as a teller at the bank.

“(Dorothy’s) line of customers was always the longest because she was so beautiful,” Barker recalled.

Mrs. Barker met her husband, Philip Kenworthy Barker, while working at the bank.

“He remarked about her rosy cheeks and that really did it,” Barker said. They were married in 1928.

After living in Portland and Cape Elizabeth for several years — they also had a camp on Sebago Lake — Mrs. Barker and her husband, who was a banker, moved to Massachusetts.

Over time, she became a passionate fan of the Boston Red Sox. Her grandson gave her a Red Sox baseball cap when she was living in an assisted living facility in Florida.

If the Red Sox won, she’d wear the cap with the brim facing forward, but if they lost, she would turn the cap around.

“If the cap was backwards, no one would talk to her at the assisted living facility. They knew better,” her daughter said.

Barker said she believes her mother was the oldest living resident of Sarasota, a large city in Florida.

Living a long life runs in her mother’s family.

Mrs. Barker’s grandmother, Dorcas Merrill Winslow, lived to be 104 years old, and Mrs. Barker’s sister, Dorothy Dyer Jackson, who lives in Portland, is 102.

Jackson celebrated her birthday Sunday, just two days after her sister died.

“She said, now I am all alone,” after being told her sister had died, Barker said.

At Mrs. Barker’s 100th birthday party, which she celebrated at DiMillo’s Restaurant in Portland, she got quite a surprise.

Her former supervisor at Maine Savings Bank showed up for the party. He was 107 years old at the time, Barker said.

Mrs. Barker lived the last 30 years alone. Her husband died in 1981. She also outlived her oldest daughter, Elizabeth Barker Atwater, who died a few years ago.

But despite the changes she lived through and the heartache she endured, Mrs. Barker never gave up.

“No matter what we’d be talking about or what we’d be doing, Mom would always say, ‘That’s life,’ ” her daughter said.

Mrs. Barker’s ashes will be buried in Portland’s Brooklawn Cemetery in October.

Staff Writer Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:

dhoey@pressherald.com

 

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