Community Corner

Dearborn Honors Oldest Living Seniors

The Dearborn Senior Center held a special birthday party to celebrate residents turning 90 or older on Friday.

Local seniors, along with Dearborn city officials, recently celebrated birthdays for residents who turned 90 or older in the past year.

The celebration was held on Friday at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center and included more than 92 seniors and their families.

"This is an event that everyone wants to be eligible to be invited to because you have to turn 90," Mayor John B. O'Reilly, Jr. joked. "A lot of our seniors are still having a good time and living full lifestyles.

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"We host this luncheon to show our respect to the people in our community who have lived so long, but it also reminds us that the opportunity exists for everybody to live long healthy lives. It also shows that Dearborn offers good quality of life services for people who live into their 80s and 90s."

Now in its eighth year, the event was marked with a free luncheon for seniors and a birthday cupcake and "Happy Birthday" sing along. Cupcakes were provided by Wayne County Commissioner Gary Woronchak.

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Dearborn resident Mary Bell Loeb turned 90 on July 6, 2012, and said she has traveled all over the world with her husband, a former U.S. Air Force pilot who was stationed in the South Pacific during World War II.

"I'm excited to be 90," she said. "No one in my family has lived as long as I have. I want to continue to do as much as I can."

Loeb said she still travels with her son to visit relatives on the east coast.

"When my son says, 'we're going', we go," she laughed. "We're going in May to see my granddaughter's wedding in Massachusetts.

"(Traveling) is a lot of fun. I've seen the world."

Carl Behling was on hand to celebrated his 101st birthday with his granddaughter, Kyrie Burdick.

Born in 1911, Behling said he still has fond memories of Dearborn as a farming community and of delivering cantaloupe with his father to road crew workers during the construction of Telegraph Road.

"I've seen and lived through a lot," he said, noting that he has never used a computer. "I'm just glad that I've still got my health."

For more information on available programs for seniors, visit www.cityofdearborn.org.


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