By By JOHN EBY/ Dowagiac Daily News
Family and friends celebrated the 100th birthday of Maria Lorenz Saturday afternoon with an open house at her son William's and daughter-in-law Linda's Gardner Mansion on Green Street.
Mrs. Lorenz, who has lived in Dowagiac 14 years, since 1992, actually became a centenarian Aug. 16. She was born in 1906 in Dolina, Austria.
She and her husband, Rudy, brought Bill, then 9, to the United States after escaping the Nazis during World War II.
"It's a very nice surprise," she said of her party.
"We came here, to a foreign country. Foreign people. Foreign language," she said, conversing in Ukrainian with neighbor Marion Weaver. "It was very hard. We never expected to come here, but in wartime, like it or not, we had to move because the front was moving. We had just 24 hours to move out. We took a suitcase and the baby. We moved from place to place. Can you believe it?"
She still likes to read and consumes newspapers in English and in Ukrainian.
The Lorenzes settled on a farm in Granger, Iowa, in February 1951.
From March 1953 until she moved to Michigan, Maria lived in Hammond, Ind., where her husband became a sheet metal worker.
The Lorenzes left Bremen, Germany, for New Orleans, La., after living in Pollham, Austria, from 1945 to 1951.
Their small farm in Europe produced everything they needed.
"Wheat, oats, corn, vegetables," she said.