Great Neck resident honored for her 103rd birthday

At 103, Mae Anderman of Great Neck reflects on her life, which has now spanned two centuries, and says she wouldn't have changed a thing.

"If I look back at everything, I would say it is a wonderful life," Anderman said Friday as her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and friends gathered at Atria Cutter Mill senior living home in Great Neck to help her usher in her 103rd birthday.

Daniel Paskal, 11 of Great Neck, said his great-grandmother is one tough woman.

"I remember once she got stitches recently and she thought she would never walk again but right now she's walking," Daniel said. "She never gives up."

Anderman was born in Brooklyn on April 8, 1907, before the start of World War I. In the 1920s, she attended City College in Brooklyn when few women pursued higher education.. She met her late husband, Max Anderman, on campus, and the couple later married and had three children.

At one point in her life, Anderman ran the Breeze Lawn Hotel in Ellenville, N.Y., in the Catskill Mountains, where she said she met the actor-comedian Buddy Hackett, who began performing in nightclubs in the Catskills as a student.

"He used to ask if he could work for me," said Anderman, who said she turned Hackett down.