Woman celebrates her 106th birthday at the keyboard

In 1912, Oreo cookies, Cracker Jack and the Girl Scouts were born. So was Dorothy “Dottie” Coleman, who marked her 106th birthday April 3 with her family in Oceanside.

Coleman was guest of honor at a birthday luncheon hosted by members of the Lake San Marcos Kiwanis Club, who have become like a second family to the centenarian since she first volunteered her services as club pianist in 2012.

To kick off the festivities, club past president Jerry Mason coaxed Coleman into playing her favorite song, the 1954 classic “Fly Me to the Moon.”

Although she has traveled to Africa, India and Australia in her later years, Coleman has been slowing down since breaking both hips in the past five years.

Eighteen months ago, she gave up her longtime home in Lake San Marcos and moved in with her daughter, Pat Coleman, and granddaughter Cinda Smits, who share a house in Oceanside. Although she was just over a bout with pneumonia, Coleman was in high spirits Tuesday.

“This is a wonderful day and it’s a wonderful feeling that so many nice people have shown me so much kindness over the years,” she said.

When asked her secrets to a long life, one is heredity. Her great-grandmother had 12 children and lived well into her 90s. A second secret is doing everything in moderation. And the third is a positive attitude that springs from her happy childhood in the great outdoors.

“Growing up in the country with fresh air and open space have something to do with it,” she said.

Born Dorothy Jones, she was the youngest of three children of German-Americans Elmer and Mabel Jones of New Park, Penn. She started playing piano at age 5 and was always the apple of everyone’s eye, according to her daughter Pat Coleman.

“She was adored,” Pat said. “She’s a person who liked performing and enjoyed the adoration. Whenever she’s out in public, she’s always happy.”

After attending a teacher’s college in Baltimore, Dorothy got a job teaching grade-school children on a military base. Not long after that, she met her future husband, Lester Coleman, at a dance.

“She was a country girl and he was this city boy, a rebel without a cause from Baltimore,” said Pat, their only child.

The Colemans married in 1934 and were together 62 years until his death in 1996.

Pat Coleman said the highlight of her mother’s life was in the early 1950s, when Lester’s job in the military took the family to Vienna, Austria. There, Dorothy studied with a piano master and learned to paint.

After he retired from the service, Dorothy went back to teaching. At Fort Ord in Monterey, she helped servicemen study to earn their high school diplomas. In their retirement years, the Colemans lived in Alabama and Florida.

But as Lester’s health declined, the couple wanted to live closer to their daughter and grandchildren, so they relocated in 1996 to Lake San Marcos. Not long after the move, Lester died, Pat said.

In her 80s and 90s, Coleman remained active, traveling the world, taking classes in music and writing and volunteering her piano services to the Kiwanis club and a local youth orchestra.