PLAQUEMINE — A Plaquemine woman who won the Miss Iberville Parish title 76 years ago is getting ready to celebrate her 94th birthday.

Shirley Elaine Schnebelen Blanchard said she will be 94 on Nov. 30 and that people are often surprised when they hear her age.

"I love life," Shirley Elaine Schnebelen Blanchard said.

She has traveled to Spain, Paris, London and Switzerland, which she described as her favorite spot. Photos from her school years also show she was class valedictorian at St. John School.

Years later, she started a fund to support her alma mater and said it is still active. 

Blanchard is also a member of the Plaquemine Garden Club. She has worked at the Plaquemine Lock Historic Site and volunteered with the city's beautification program.

In 1950, she was crowned Miss Iberville Parish. She said she represented Iberville Parish at the Sugar Festival in New Iberia, gave a short speech and was judged.

Blanchard now lives in the home where she was born. She moved away after she married her husband Earle and they started a family, then later returned when the house they were in felt too big after the children were gone.

Family photos fill tables and walls throughout the home. The photos include many of her 16 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

"I'm just so happy with my family and all of these grandchildren that they think enough of me to want to be with me," Blanchard said.