Maintaining a busy life at 102

Playing bridge at the Center For Adult Life Enrichment is one way Henrietta Dobin remains busy. With fellow card players Victor Molinsky, left, and Irwin Sklar.

Jeffrey Bessen/Herald

Relaxing in 1961, a then 50-year-old Henrietta Dobin had no idea her future would include playing bridge at 102.

Courtesy Henrietta Dobin

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It’s said that remaining active is the best method to staying fit and East Rockaway resident and two-year Center For Adult Life Enrichment member Henrietta Dobin could be the poster woman for that axiom.

The 102-year-old — yes 102! — reached that milestone last Saturday and celebrated her birthday with fellow bridge players and other members of the Hewlett-based center on Aug. 16.

Dobin, a Brooklyn native who has lived in Far Rockaway and for more than 25 years in East Rockaway, keeps active by playing her favorite card game, painting and volunteering at the Nassau County Museum of Art.

“I have no secret,” she said when asked how she has lived such a long and vibrant life. “I was blessed. When you see me you won’t believe my age.”

Watching Dobin cut the birthday cake at the center you wouldn’t know she is more than a century old.

However, old is not the word you would use to describe Dobin, whose facility at bridge was praised by two players. “She’s alert and so good and knowledgeable,” said Victor Molinsky, who along with Irwin Sklar, brought Dobin a bouquet of flowers. “She plays excellent bridge and is on top of everything,” Rosalind Deutschman said.

Born Henrietta Horne in Newark, NJ, her family moved to Brooklyn when she was 5. “I was a good student,” she said about her school days.

She met Solomon Dobin at a party and they were married in 1930. The couple had two children; a boy and girl, who had four children. There are five great-grandchildren. Solomon died in 1993.

For 15 years, she worked in the morgue of the Brooklyn Standard Union newspaper. A paper’s morgue is where old files of articles and photographs are kept.

If Dobin did have a secret for her long life it could be this. “In my life I traveled all over, there isn’t a country I haven’t gone to that you could name,” she said, adding that at 70 she backpacked through Russia with Solomon. “No matter where I was, I went to a synagogue on Friday night. I got to know people.”

An artist who works in oils and paints abstracts, modern and contemporary pieces, Dobin volunteers as a receptionist at the county’s Museum of Art in Roslyn collecting money and asking questions, and still meeting people. “I love it because I am an artist,” she said, “a very good artist.”

One who is still creating an interesting life.