E.M. woman turns 100, again

Mollie Spiegel turned 100 for the second time on Nov. 25, 2011. The Russian-born woman moved to America with her mother and two siblings when was she was 10 years old, but her father made his children one year younger to acquire cheaper visas, she said. This year was her 100th birthday according to American records.

Spiegel, who only spoke Russian and Yiddish when she came to America, said she didn’t learn English until she went to school. “I didn’t know what a pencil was,” she recalled. While it may have been difficult in the beginning, she was glad to leave Russia.

“We had to have papers to come to America,” she remembered. Her father was working in New York when he sent for his family who initially entered the country illegally. “If they catch us, they’ll shoot us,” she said about her travels to the boat that took her to “the land of opportunity.”

Spiegel adjusted quickly to life in America and became a very good student who loved to read. “Her teachers told her she should go to college, but women didn’t go to college in those days,” said her son, Burt Spiegel. “My parents needed me to work,” she added.

Spiegel attended a neighborhood dance a few years after graduating high school where she met her husband, who she would be married to for 50 years before his death. She was walking up the stairs and said someone called out, “Spiegel.” She turned to see what the man wanted and he said, “I don’t mean you, I mean him,” she recalled. He was pointing to Joe Spiegel. She never had to change her name and added, “Faith has its way.”

Mollie and Joe Spiegel had three children, Sherry, Gladys and Burton. “We started off with nothing,” Spiegel said, “but we had a good life. We were together all the time.”

After raising her children, Mollie worked as a teacher and bookkeeper and after moving to East Meadow 30 years ago, she joined the East Meadow Senior Center and was president from 1986 to 1988, treasurer from 1983 to 1985 and their Woman of the Year in 1989. “I wasn’t one to stay home. I did everything,” she said.

Spiegel continued to be an avid knitter and reader as she aged. “I always had a book in my hand,” she said. “You learn a lot when you read.”

When asked what advice she would like to share with younger generations she said: “Don’t said you can’t. If you don’t know, you learn. Just keep going and you will get there.”

To honor the sociable senior, members at the East Meadow Senior Center hosted a birthday party for Spiegel on Nov. 30, where she was honored with a citation from Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray. Nearly 40 friends and family spent the afternoon with Spiegel and she just humbly said, “I can’t believe it, but I love it.”