ROCKPORT — To Christine Pitman, another birthday celebrated is no big deal.
But when the numbers surpass 100 years, people take notice.
Eight friends jump-started the celebration of Pitman’s 104th birthday on Tuesday by feting her Friday at the restaurant My Place by the Sea at the end of Bearskin Neck. The friends typically meet on Fridays for coffee, usually at Pitman’s home on Bayridge Lane.
Pitman said Friday that she feels fit as a fiddle.
“I’m fine,” she said after the party, which included cake. “There are no problems. We just had a big party today. The party was great.”
As for turning 104, she never believed this would happen.
“Oh, heavens no,” Pitman said. “It’s very hard to believe. I don’t feel any different.”
Pitman is a longtime painter and a member of the Rockport Art Association and the North Shore Arts Association in Gloucester.
“I’m still painting,” said Pitman, known for painting a number of portraits through the years “Right now I’m working on a landscape. It’s a view from somebody’s deck over toward Rockport. I enjoy working with acrylics rather than oils because they dry faster. I keep busy. I like to paint.”
Pitman also volunteers at the Second Glance thrift store of The Open Door in Gloucester.
Pitman was born and raised Holyoke and also lived outside Nashville with her family for a number of years before finally settling in Rockport in the late 1970s.
Pitman and her husband Donald Pitman, who served as vice president of Murray Manufacturing in Nashville before retiring, together had five children, one living in Nashville, three in Florida, and daughter Nancy, who also lives in Rockport.
Pitman is already looking to her future: “I have promised my brain to the Boston University Medical Center,” she said. “They do a lot of research on people who live to over 100.”
She wonders whether researchers might find the reasons behind her longevity.
Her daughter, Nancy Pitman, said it is impressive her mother plans to donate her brain to science. But her mother is not ready to donate her brain, not yet.
“She’s giving it, as long as they take it after she’s gone,” said Nancy Pitman. “She’s still using it.”
Like her mother, Nancy, 65, is also a painter. She said her mother continues to paint in the third-floor studio of her home.
“Through her, I’ve met all the big artists in town,” Nancy Pitman said. “She does water colors and acrylics. She does a little bit of everything.”
Nancy Pitman describes her mother as a no-nonsense person — someone likely to use the phrase “Just do it.” She said when she arrives at her mother’s Rockport home, she is greeted with an arrow hanging on the wall pointing either upstairs or downstairs, indicating that is where her mother can be found.
Christine Pitman is well known on Cape Ann, said her daughter. In fact, when Nancy posted on Facebook a notice about her mother’s birthday, she received 97 hits or acknowledgments of the message.
“She’s just an amazing person,” said Nancy Pitman. “There are just so many people who are connected to her. She’s something else. That’s the catch phrase that everybody uses.”
As for Friday’s birthday party, Christine Pitman said it was festive.
“We had a fabulous time,” the birthday girl said. “We had champagne. It was great. All of us had a great time.”
Stephen Hagan can be reached at 978-675-2708 or at shagan@northofboston.com.