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La Jolla gains another centenarian next week in Lucienne Guillemin, who will celebrate with cake and wine, surrounded by those she loves after a century of travel and music.
Guillemin was born Lucienne Billard on Feb. 18, 1921, in Paris but moved to French Canada shortly afterward.
She experienced her first and most profound loss as a young child, when her mother died of tuberculosis.
Guillemin said her earliest memory is “on the boat back to France from Canada with my sister and our deceased mother on board. I was 3 years old.”
Guillemin and her year-older sister, Charlotte, were being sent to Guillemin’s maternal grandmother, who raised the girls for a few years.