Lehigh Acres woman celebrates her 105th birthday

A Lehigh Acres woman is celebrating her 105th birthday.

Doree Kemler is celebrating a big milestone today and she’s lived quite the extraordinary life after more than a century on earth.

 

Fountain Crest Retirement Community in Lehigh Acres threw a party for Kemler’s 105th birthday.

WINK News sat down with Kemler to talk about what has changed from 1917 to now.

“A lot of the kids in those days didn’t even graduate high school,” Kelmer said

But not Kelmer said she was the first in her family to graduate college and she earned two university degrees.

Kelmer grew up during the time of the Holocaust, but she still wears her Star of David proudly.

“I remember my mother would say to her went out to play. ‘Don’t tell anybody. You’re Jewish.’ Because of that. Europe was full of antisemitism,” Kelmer said.

That’s not the only struggle Kelmer has overcome throughout her life but the reason she believes she has made it to 105 is never giving up.

That’s how she took on cancer.

My son asked the doctor what the prognosis was to the doctor for those who return in a week or two. And I said to myself, no, I am not giving in,” Kelmer said.

What she is most proud of is her three children, Kelmer’s youngest son recently died and she just has one birthday wish this year.

“For my children to live as long as I do and be just as healthy that’s what I want for my birthday,” Kelmer said.

Family is everything to her and so is her art.

“My eldest sister played the piano. My second sister played the violin. My third sister played the flute, and I’m tone deaf. So I became an artist,” Kelmer said.

Kelmer is quite an artist picking up painting and sculpting in her 60s, she even earned awards for her work.

Dotty Bress, a resident at Fountain Crest Retirement Community said, “She’s a real inspiration to all of us really something to see her with no walker and no eyeglasses and so active and she loves the library and she goes on the bus she’s a very very nice woman.”

She is a person her friends at Fountain Crest are happy to celebrate.