Gertrude Halberg turned 100 years old today.

And she said if she could have anything she wanted for a Christmas/birthday present it would be this: the Jayhawk men’s basketball team winning the NCAA tournament in March.

“That would be a nice Christmas present,” Halberg said. “Anything for KU.”

A small woman who uses a wheelchair, Halberg didn’t want to talk about how or why she has lived so long.

And she said she doesn’t remember how she celebrated her birthday as a child.

“When I was a little girl — 100 years ago? That’s been so long ago,” she said.

Halberg was born on a farm in northwest Iowa. After she married, she and her husband moved from Iowa to Chicago. Her husband sold bonds for a bank. She worked for a broker.

After the stock market crash of 1929, she and her husband moved to Lawrence to live temporarily with his parents. He sold life insurance and she found work as a stenographer. And they became Jayhawk fans. She and her husband attended KU football and basketball games together for years.

One of Halberg’s nieces, 49-year-old Toni Jager of Topeka, said her aunt is a generous, enthusiastic person who used to sunbathe with her. She said her aunt often asks why anyone would want to live to be 100.

Gertrude Halberg, will turn 100 years old today and has lived in Lawrence since about 1929. Her birthday/Christmas wish was for the KU men's basketball team to win the NCAA Championship.

“She just says. … ‘Give me my legs and my eyesight back,'” Jager says, laughing. “She’d be out sunbathing again.”

Halberg still lives in her own home near Kansas University with the help of a part-time aide. She rents out part of the house and still owns a car, though she doesn’t drive. Her husband died about 25 years ago. They had no children.

Halberg and her husband went to KU football and men’s basketball games for years. She now uses a wheelchair and can’t remember when she stopped attending games.

She had to stop watching the games on television a few years ago because of failing vision.

“When she watched games, she would hoot and holler — in her 90s,” Jager said. “She’s religiously listening to them and rooting them on.”

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Halberg still has the Jayhawk men’s basketball schedule posted on her wall and listens to games on the radio.

And, Halberg, who knew the legendary Phog Allen, is hoping that the undefeated Jayhawks will deliver her belated Christmas present — the national championship — come March.

“It puts a thrill in you,” Halberg said of KU basketball.

“We’ve done it before,” she said of making it to the Final Four. “I hope they’ll win the whole thing.”