Willow Glen resident still going strong at 106 years old
It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Lenore Luedemann has seen it all. At the very least, the Willow Glen resident who celebrated her 106th birthday last week has seen more than anyone around here — and that includes her younger brother, Robert Norona, who turned 100 in January.
Bob sat next to his sister on March 3 when they celebrated her 106th journey around the sun at her favorite restaurant, the Three Flames on Meridian Avenue, with friends including Ilko and Carol Vuica, her neighbors on Hicks Road.
Lenore, known by family and friends as Ellie, grew up in a very different San Jose than the one we see around us. When she was born, about three months before the start of World War I, the city had about 35,000 residents and was a farming community known as the Valley of the Heart’s Delight. Both her parents were born in New Almaden, and her father worked for Garden City Meat, which had cattle corrals on North First Street. (Longevity runs in the family, as both parents lived into their 90s.)
Like many kids growing up in the era, she put in her time picking prunes at an orchard on what’s now Curtner Avenue but graduated from San Jose State in 1936. She met her late husband, Hank, dancing at the Cocoanut Grove Ballroom in Santa Cruz, and they married in 1947 after he returned from service in the South Pacific during World War II. They settled in Willow Glen, where until a few years ago, Ellie continued to walk every week to St. Christopher Church.
She worked in the registrar’s office at San Jose State until her retirement in 1975 — more than two decades before most of SJSU’s current students were born.
Mary Anne Groen, chief of staff for San Jose City Councilwoman Dev Davis, said a commendation in honor of Luedemann was being planned for a future council meeting, but it’s being delayed until the coronavirus passes. “I asked her what her secret to long life is,” Groen said, “and she smiled really big and said, ‘Hard work and pickin’ prunes.’ ”