In a few different ways, Lillian Stein is feeling younger these days.
“Things I learned long ago, they’re coming back to me,” she said.
On Dec. 13, a cousin’s granddaughter called. Stein and the rest of her family are Jewish, and for no particular reason — without even really thinking about it, she said — she started talked to the young lady in fluent Hebrew.
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This was in the middle of Stein’s 100th birthday party. She hadn’t spoken Hebrew in many years.
“I silenced the whole room,” she said. “Even I was stunned. It just fell out of me.”
Born Lillian Goldstein on Dec. 13, 1915, Stein spent an afternoon with friends and relatives one full century later, in her room at the Claremont Buffalo Grove retirement home.
She smiled at a few of the old men who came — men who she recalled feeding when they were babies in high chairs.
Stein’s room filled with nieces and nephews, cousins’ kids, friends and such. Visitors came from Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida and Pennsylvania. The event was organized by her sister, Paulette Kallow of Wheeling, who is 95, and Kallow’s daughter.
“They did the work, and they paid all the money on it, too,” Stein said. “And I bask in the glory.”
Her husband, Charles, died at 84 from an infection on his heart. They were married 50 years, but never had children.
“It just couldn’t be,” she said.
Born in a hospital on Chicago’s East Side that no longer exists, Stein lived with her family on the West Side. She worked for 33 years at Associated Talmud Torahs of Chicago, and could still accurately recall the address of her office in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood — 2828 W. Pratt Blvd.
“I worked with men,” she said. “They were very learned, judgmental and devoted to what they were doing.”
Charles and Lillian loved the symphony and the opera. She told long, detailed stories about growing up during the Great Depression. Men would knock on her parents’ back door and beg for food. And she tried to explain family jokes, some involving a watermelon.
“I married a very, very fine man,” Stein said. “He was not a well person later in life, but we worked it out. We had a wonderful life together.”
If Stein’s 100-year-old body needs much medication, she puts it away before visitors show up. Thanks to a good diet and exercise, she said she does not suffer from any notable ailments.
“I’m basically OK,” she said the day after her party — but noted that she was tired
But she was not in the exercise class on Dec. 14. Her birthday party was the day before, and all that celebrating tired her out.
Not everything about Stein is getting younger these days, but she said she was pleased with what was.
Twitter: @RonnieAtPioneer