As told to Barbara Bensoussan

Despite her diminutive size — she was well under five feet tall and thin — Goldie had a certain core strength reinforced by a life of immigration hard work and many years of widowhood

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hy did Hashem choose to keep Goldie Steinberg in this world for almost 115 years? I still can’t claim to have figured out the formula for long life. Lots of people work hard retain close relationships to their families and friends and have a positive attitude like Goldie did. I’ve worked as a nursing home administrator for a long time but I was fascinated by Goldie who at her passing just short of her 115th birthday in 2015 was the oldest Jewish person in the world the second oldest person in theUS and the seventh oldest person in the world.

By most estimates there are only 300–450 “supercentenarians” (people who live to at least 110) worldwide. Goldie generously agreed to donate a sample of her DNA to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Boston School of Medicine for analysis to further their research on the sources of longevity. Nonetheless I wondered. Was it her DNA that was responsible for her exceptionally long life? Or was it something more?

In my career I’ve seen all sorts of syndromes and illnesses watched people undergo surgeries and the subsequent rehab. Sometimes they bravely soldier through one crisis just to find themselves afflicted with something even more challenging a few months down the line. Then you have the doctors struggling to treat a bunch of different maladies simultaneously trying to prevent multiple medications from canceling each other out or creating a disastrous interaction. But Goldie was like the Energizer Bunny — she just kept going and going. Every year at Grandell we’d throw her a big birthday bash with a huge photo cake and musicians. We’d bring in an ornate chair upholstered in white leather where Goldie would sit like a queen on her throne. Watching her there every year wearing clothing she’d made herself her hair freshly coiffed receiving an audience of children grandchildren and great-grandchildren in addition to local politicians journalists and choirs from various Bais Yaakovs I admit I’d find myself thinking this one would surely be her last. But year after year we found ourselves making that party again.

Goldie lived in the rehab section of Grandell Rehabilitation & Nursing Center Rehabilitation andNursingCenter not the nursing facility because she had nothing seriously wrong with her beyond a heart condition that required a pacemaker. She claimed the nursing-care side was “for old people”! Besides some arthritis so-so hearing and lower strength than a younger person — our staff assisted her with dressing and showering in her last years — Goldie was in excellent shape with a mind completely miraculously lucid. Even staff who had moved on to other positions within the facility but would stop in occasionally to visit were greeted by their first name and our other residents enjoyed an increased comfort level seeing someone so much older than them managing so well.