Photograph by George Sakkestad
Marie Sorensen poses with a photograph of her as a child.
By Cristy Shauck
Marie Sorensen remembers driving to the top of Blossom Hill Road with her husband, Peter, and gazing down upon orchards full of prune blossoms that made the valley appear blanketed with snow.
"My husband picked blossoms and turned them into a wreath for my head," Marie recalls. "Now you drive up there and look down and all you see are houses."
A photograph of Marie wearing the wreath, with Peter at her side, circa 1922, hangs on the bedroom wall of her Saratoga home.
No one could tell by looking at the white-haired lady with serene, pale-blue eyes and a husky voice that she has recently celebrated her 100th birthday.
Born in East Linnet, Denmark, Marie trained as a cook at a resort hotel, making open-faced sandwiches and other traditional dishes. She could have been a professional chef, but chose to follow her sweetheart to San Jose instead, arriving on June 1, 1921.
Marie and Peter married ten days later and moved into a Park Avenue house with a living room, bedroom, small kitchen, an outhouse and a spectacular view of San Jose's Rose Garden.
Marie often put her son Carl, who was born in 1925, into his baby buggy and pushed it along Park Avenue into the then-small town of San Jose. "The happiest moment of my life was when my son was born," she says. "When I had to wash the clothes for the baby, I boiled them on the gas stove, then went outside to hang them on the line."
Peter, a sheet metal worker, died in 1940. To support herself and Carl, Marie joined a co-op with three other Danish women who took care of expectant mothers, cooking for the family, caring for the mother and children before and after the baby arrived. She was so popular that mothers told her in advance when they would need her services and asked her to reserve that time for them. She retired at 68.
Marie never remarried, but she enjoyed traveling around the country with the other women in her co-op.
Famous for her cooking, Marie baked more than 400 cookies and seven fruitcakes for Carl's marriage to her daughter-in-law, Wilda. She cooked and canned up until her vision began to fail.
She can still see the outline of shapes, so she follows a few of the soaps on television. She also enjoys listening to books on tape and Danish religious music. She takes a daily spin around her house using a walker and gets herself into bed each evening.
A nurse's aide comes in each morning to help with administering medication. "See, I take a lot of pills," Marie says, holding up a box with slots containing pills of different shapes and sizes.
Gout has seeped into her hands, and she retains water due to the heart medication she takes. Yet Marie is still interested in what goes on around her and enjoys socializing, albeit for short periods of time.
She has no advice for those wanting to live as long as she has. She has eaten a typical Danish diet, including meat, fish and the occasional beer. She still enjoys a little butter on her bread, even though her cholesterol is high.
"Her doctor doesn't see the need for her to be on a special diet anymore. He said, 'At her age, why bother?' " says Wilda, who lives next door to Marie.
Carl died of cancer in 1982.
Marie, a tall, big-boned Scandinavian, has outlived two younger brothers and two younger sisters; only baby sister Astrid, now 94, survives. Her daughter-in-law Wilda and one of her daughters keep Marie company and manage her affairs.
Her doctor insisted that Marie come in for a checkup on the day of her centennial birthday, but Marie stayed home the rest of the day to receive phone calls from relatives in Denmark. Wilda organized a buffet party at the Church of Christ in Campbell on the following Saturday.
Carl and Wilda had four children, who produced five great-grandchildren and, so far, one great-great grandchild for Marie.
"My grandchildren said, 'You've got to live to be 100,' " and I said I'd try," Marie says, as if to explain her longevity. "I still can't believe I'm one hundred."
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, August 21, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved