Soon, Laura May Lewis will be turning 100, but she’s not quite sure what 100 is supposed to feel like.

Lewis was born May 31, 1925, in Greensboro, North Carolina, and was raised on a farm. Her mother was pregnant at the same time as one of the farm’s cows, leading friends and family to place bets on who would come first. She takes pride in being the winner.

Her family was poor, she said, and moved frequently. Before she graduated from a North Carolina high school in 1942, she took a vocational theory class that let her take a part-time job. She earned 22 cents an hour working the candy and notions counters at W. T. Grant, a nationwide general store chain that shuttered in the 70s.

At the time, 12th grade was optional and Lewis left school after graduation to work for a life insurance company before marrying her childhood sweetheart, Richard “Dick” Lewis in 1943. Soon afterward, he was sent to fight in World War II just after the birth of the couple’s first daughter of two.

“He was sent over when our daughter was three days old. He left me in the hospital with her, and he was sent on the front lines in Germany,” Lewis said late last month in an interview at her Severna Park home. “We didn’t have TVs then; it was only radios. You could go to the movies and watch the news, [so] you knew kind of what the war was like, but other than that, when you would hear things on the radio, and your ear was most always glued to that.”

Dick Lewis came home from the war and went to work at the National Security Agency in Alexandria, Virginia. She joined him working for the government where they stayed until the mid-50s when they built a house in Severna Park. They did not stay long because Dick Lewis, part of what was then the Army Security Agency, was sent to Germany.

Lewis has fond memories of her five years in Germany, where she camped often with the locals. Germany is also where she found her love for golf — she has always loved staying active, preferring a day on the greens to a day in the mall. She made military friends, many of whom followed her back to America.

She has been in Severna Park ever since, watching it grow from a little place with only a real estate office and a post office to what it is today.

After Dick Lewis died in 1985, Lewis spent 15 years working at the Severn School before retiring to get in more golf time.

Debbie Scherr said she always admired her mother’s strength after Dick Lewis died, always pushing forward.

Aside from golf, Lewis is a fan of tennis and bowling, taking part in both ladies and coed leagues. She and her husband helped found the Severna Park Elk’s Lodge in the early 1970s, where she remains involved. She still drives.

She’s not sure exactly what secret ingredient brought her so close to 100, but she thinks staying active has something to do with it.

To celebrate, the family plans on having a party at the Elk’s lodge.

“I don’t know how it got here so fast. I mean, people [ask me], ‘Do you feel 100?’ How’s 100 supposed to feel? I don’t know,” Lewis said.

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