Goldie Steinberg Still Going Strong at 113

Goldie Steinberg is one of the oldest people in the world and has lived most of her years past her centennial in Long Beach.

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A long-term resident of the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center on West Broadway, Steinberg celebrated her 113th birthday Oct. 30, officially making her as the 14th oldest person in the world, the ninth oldest in the United States and the second oldest in New York, according to the California-based Gerontology Research Group.

Known as an “exuberant and welcoming individual,” Steinberg remains active, spending time watching the New York Yankees on television, knitting and helping her fellow residents at Grandell, the nursing center said. She has voted in every election since 1924, a total of 23 times.

When asked about the secret to her long and still healthy life, Steinberg said: “My children keep me alive.”

On Wednesday, Grandell hosted a special celebration for Steinberg’s birthday and welcomed her family, friends and well wishers to join in the festivities. Students from the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach and Shulamith School for Girls in Cedarhurst sang “Happy Birthday” to she. She received handmade cards, a medal and citations from Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano and the Town of Hempstead, and a Yankees cap and blanket, according to Newsday.

“Goldie is such an immense pleasure to have here at Grandell,” Baruch Giberstien, an administrator at the nursing center, said in a statement. “We are blessed to be in the presence of someone as wise and as wonderful as she is. From the bottom of our hearts, we all wish her many more years of continued joy and nothing but love.”

Born in Kishinev, Romania, in 1900, Steinberg was 23 when she arrived in America, after her uncle offered her and her sister the opportunity to come to the states. She resided in Brooklyn and worked as a seamstress, sewing draperies and dresses. She met her future husband, Phillip Steinberg, while she was a member of a society of Eastern Europeans. After they married, the couple moved to an apartment in Brooklyn where they raised two children. Phillip died in 1967. Steinberg arrived at the Grandell Center from Bensonhurst at age 104.