What’s the secret to living to 100? Love, prayers, and...

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Today we can celebrate the century-long life of a woman who has greeted every chore, every setback, every bump along life’s road with a smile, a hug, a prayer for better days ahead, and a slice of zucchini pie!

My husband and I were blessed to attend the 100th birthday party for Dorothy, a Buffalo woman who babysat for us decades ago and whom we’ve kept in touch with over these many years. I’m not using her last name because, if you can believe it, she still lives alone!

The party brought dozens of Dorothy’s family members and friends together in a banquet room at Danny’s Restaurant in Cheektowaga. Her godson, Frank Jachlewski, who flew in from Florida for the party, said, “Dorothy treats everyone as special. I always felt I was special”

As I sat next to her taking notes, with her permission, I had to ask the inevitable question: What is the secret to your long life?

Dorothy leaned over and said quietly, “Lots of love and prayers.” I said, “Do you mean the love and prayers that you give, or the love and prayers that are given to you?”

“Both,” she said.

With that, her daughter, Sue Borkowski, chimed in, adding other elements to the long-life secret equation.

First, Borkowski said, is pomegranate juice. One glass every day.

Second, Dorothy keeps a strict schedule: meals at 5:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., and 4:30 p.m., exercise bike for 15 minutes each morning, walking in the house for 15 minutes, then time to make zucchini pie (her late second husband, Leo, loved it more than apple pie), a wide variety of cookies, and other goodies. It’s all followed by a nap in a chair – never lying down.

The baked goods are a welcome gift to the many people who surround Dorothy in her gentle glide through life these days. But the rest of her long life has been anything but gentle.

She came into this world in 1924 as a 13-pound baby -- born at home!

She said the home is still standing near the corner of Harlem Road and Walden Avenue. It’s the home her family had to give up when her father lost his job during the Great Depression.

When she was 20, she married a WWII Army veteran. She doesn’t like to talk about what happened during that first marriage, but the timeline of her life shows that Dorothy essentially became a single parent working hard to provide a good home for their two children.

She took jobs in a central supply facility, a grocery store, and a bank. She cleaned houses and babysat. In the spirit of the ‘Greatest Generation,’ Dorothy did what she could to put food on the table.

And what a legacy she has woven over this past century, now with two grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. One of her grandchildren calls himself lucky “to grow up having her love and support as a constant in my life.”

Indeed, when I asked Dorothy her advice for parents in this fast-paced, high-tech, social media-driven world today, which has changed dramatically over the past 100 years, her advice in 1924 could have been identical to what it is now in 2024: “You can’t spend enough time with your children. They need all the guidance you can give them.”

When my husband and I got up to leave, we each gave Dorothy a hug. She took my hand and looked at me with purpose – the purpose of a 100-year-old woman who wanted me and others to listen to her words.

She waved her hand around the room and said, “If it weren’t for my friends and family, I wouldn’t be here. I’m grateful for them.”