Bourne resident known for risk-taking celebrates a big birthday

Lillian Vaccarello turned 103 on Saturday, and she's always been ahead of everyone else, according to her family.

For her 80th birthday, the Pocasset resident took a hot air balloon ride.

In 2014, she topped that — as she turned 93 — with a half-hour biplane ride over Buzzards Bay and the Cape Cod Canal, taking off from Cape Cod Airfield on Race Lane in Marstons Mills.

Ten years after the biplane ride, "she is still as beautiful and spunky," granddaughter Karen Wiper said.

On Saturday, Vaccarello settled for lunch at the Pilot House in Sandwich, entering to applause wearing a special birthday tiara. Sixteen people were at the luncheon, Wiper said.

Vaccarello, who was born in Concord and whose family comes from Norway, has been a bit of a newsmaker her entire life, her son, Vincent "Skip" Vaccarello said in 2014.

At age 13, she had to hang on for dear life under a railroad trestle as a train chugged over her head, an incident on Palm Sunday that was covered in the Boston newspapers at the time, he said.

In her graduating class at Concord High School, Vaccarello was voted both the prettiest and the most athletic.

The  Cape Cod Times is providing this coverage for free as a public service. Please take a moment to support local journalism by subscribing.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Hot air balloon, biplane. What is next for 103-year-old Cape resident?