Where to start? Should we tell you the airplane flying over the Salisbury Civic Center pulling a banner wishing Mary Hanford a happy 100th birthday encountered gale force winds and had to come down before she got to see it ....

Or that about 500 people got inside before the heavens exploded as though Mary Hanford had asked for enough rain on her birthday to put the wells back in business?

Or should we tell you about the flowers, those summer garden topiaries made by her daughter-in-law, Bunny Hanford, and former Hanford Wholesale Florist employee Tim Tompkins? Tim lives in Hong Kong now, but he was here for the party, and he called on old friend, Jim Foltz, county parks director and son of a florist, to help Bunny turn the Civic Center into a thing of beauty.

Or should we tell you there were bushels of strawberries? And a birthday cake that had 100 roses on it and looked like a master’s painting. And an ice sculpture. And an enlarged picture of a stunning Mary Hanford when she was young?

Or about a happy, celebrating, easy-going-mood that made nobody hesitate to ask former Sen. Bob Dole or NBC weatherman Willard Scott — or both — to stand close and pose for a picture?

Or about Bill and Gloria Gaither, the first family of Christian music and the special, special surprise in a mountain of birthday surprises? They were late. Weather rumored to include 80 mph winds forced their plane down in Winston-Salem, and they had to rush here by car before everybody left.

It was some party!

A party fit for a 100-year-old who always made anyone she talked to feel important, who is still “second mother” to a host of youngsters and grandparents alike.

It was a party that will be remembered, talked about, measured by as time passes, that started early and lasted late. It had a lot of touches from those old-timey teas Mary Hanford had grown up with and given — a gracious greeting at the door, beauty everywhere, Cheerwine punch (Willard Scott showed off a can of Cheerwine while Bob Dole sang about Pepsi Cola hitting the spot), pimento cheese and cucumber sandwiches. International pianist Ella Troy Woodson Lee, who’d been in John Hanford’s class at school, was at the piano.

Talk about a party started years ago, before Mary Hanford turned 95, remembers Juanita Williams, who has helped Salisburians entertain for generations.

Liddy talked to her about one right after Christmas.

“She said she didn’t know what to do. They’d wanted to give her mother a party on her 95th birthday, but Mrs. Hanford said, ‘Oh, no! Wait until I’m 100.’ And now she’s 100, and she was afraid her mother might remember and wonder if they didn’t do it, and she worried about how they should invite people. She said, ‘Suppose we put out a blanket invitation and nobody comes?’ ”

Juanita knew that wouldn’t happen.

A close friend says Mary Hanford told her daughter not to even think about a party “because she was afraid someone would get overlooked and not get an invitation and would be hurt, so Liddy promised there would be no party invitations. But she didn’t say they wouldn’t have the party.”

Her children kept plans a secret to keep her from getting anxious. It was finally announced in the Post Sunday, but her paper wasn’t delivered until evening and the phones had been taken off the hooks.

Mary Hanford was so busy watching her religious programs on television, she didn’t realize she hadn’t seen the paper until Liddy and Bob arrived Sunday.

Bob broke the news.

“Well,” he told her when they got here, “I’ve been reading all about this big party they’re having for you on Tuesday.”

By Monday, Liddy says, her mother was “really into it and enjoying it.”

On Tuesday she arrived a little before party time in a big Park Avenue Buick provided by Salisbury Motor Co. with a police escort and blue lights flashing fore and aft.

But they weren’t brighter than Mary Hanford’s smile, reflected in the smiles of the line that formed quickly to wish her well and never seemed to stop.

The program included everything her children and grandchildren — and Willard Scott, the weatherman who’s made a special place for himself wishing happy birthday to 100-year-olds — could dream up.

First, a silent slide show on a giant screen as people talked and ate and took pictures. Then a warm welcome from her son, John, and a video on that big screen, with birthday greetings from Sen. Jesse Helms, Sen. Strom Thurmond, Garth Brooks, Rep. Robin Hayes, members of her family and many, others, including neighbor Mary Vincent holding the Doles’ new dog, Leader II.

“I knew you’d make 100,” son-in-law Bob Dole said, “but I didn’t know I’d be around when you made it.”

Then came accolades and good wishes from family and friends — from Liddy, who talked about a mother who was “front and center in my life at every step” and a real PTA activist when there was so much to be done, with no cafeteria at Boyden High, no band uniforms, not even much shrubbery.

And from Della Murdoch Carlton, Betty Dan Spencer, Megan Kluttz, Elizabeth Hundley, David Rouzer, Russell Perry, Mayor Susan Kluttz, who proclaimed it Mary Cathey Hanford Day, and her grandsons, John and Jody Hanford.

All of them remembered that she’d always been there, always given her time when they needed an ear or a word of encouragement or a suggestion for a term paper or a story about something she knew or a memory of the past that would point the way into the future.

When Willard Scott asked her what she was going to do in her next 100 years, she was ready with her answer.

“I’m going to let them look after me,” she said.

Finally the Gaithers arrived and people gathered at the piano to hear them speak and sing to Mary Hanford.

“We have this moment to put in our hands,

“And to touch as it slips through our fingers like sand.

“Let’s praise God ...

“That we have this moment today.”

Liddy, said Mary Hanford’s grandson, Johnny, must have asked herself what would give his grandmother the biggest thrill, and the Gaithers had to be the answer because “my grandmother listens to them day and night.”

“You have made our day,” Liddy told them, and Camille Reische, like everyone else listening and watching and smiling, summed it up.

“What a final candle on the cake!” she said.

Elizabeth Taylor of Salisbury might have put her finger on Mary Hanford about two weeks before her birthday, when the N.C. Society of the Colonial Dames of America recognized her leadership and celebrated her birthday at its annual meeting in Winston-Salem.

Mary Hanford still keeps her finger on the pulse of the organizations she helped establish, Taylor said. “But when she was interviewed by a journalist a few years ago, she said, ‘I’m just not ready for a whole thing about my life. I like being with people and doing things. Other people do so many things worthy of praise. I would rather talk about them.’

“Indeed,” she added, “she has the uncanny gift of turning the spotlight on others, which makes us all feel very special about ourselves. That’s why she is so loved and revered by all who know this gracious lady.”