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No. 1 son turned 50 this week, and while that may have been a shock to him, it was also a shock to me. After properly celebrating the occasion with the family, I am left with the astonishing thought that I have been a parent for 50 years.

What does it mean to be a parent?

For starters, I know that the single biggest difference in my life, and I suspect in most people’s lives, comes with having a child. Getting married isn’t such a dramatic change, especially today when dating for years before marriage has become more the norm. Accommodating another adult into one’s daily routine, if done incrementally and with someone of compatible outlook, isn’t all that jarring. But just put a newborn baby into the mix and any semblance of order and predictability goes right out the window. A newborn brings instant humility to the parents. Even downright terror.

One of the most appealing qualities in the man who eventually became my husband was his desire to have children. His eagerness matched my own. Now I know there are some who do not wish to procreate but, for us, the prospect of loving and raising children was as natural as taking the next breath. This is not a carefully thought-out ideology — it is, for many, just instinct.

So then why was I so terrified when we brought that little package of squirming baby home from the hospital and laid him in the middle of our king-size bed? It’s one thing to think about dishing out gobs of love in the abstract. It’s another when the love is commensurate with responsibility. I don’t believe I ever thought about having a child in quite these stark terms: I was directly responsible for the survival of another human being. And there he was, in need of an immediate diaper change.

I didn’t recognize the totality of my terror until I brought him to the pediatrician for his first-month checkup. The doctor weighed him and exclaimed that his healthy weight gain was “a result of his nursing.” Then the doctor measured him and carried on about his length. This kid was off the charts — he was destined to be center for the Knicks.

That was the doctor’s reaction. Mine was an intense relief that the baby was going to live. With no prior experience or exposure to infants, I was afraid that I would inadvertently cause his demise. And without realizing it, I had silently lived with that fear for a whole month. The sense of responsibility for another’s life can be overwhelming. It is certainly built into our architecture, to a greater or lesser degree, for the rest of our lives. Their pain is our pain. And alternately, their successes are our successes. Little did I know that the first month of a baby’s life is, in some ways, the easiest time with a child — except for the fatigue factor. All one has to do is diaper, bathe, feed and burp an average newborn before putting him or her down to sleep. The harder parts come later — and also the more satisfying ones.

Someone said to me, “Once a parent, always a parent.” That is a truism. Yes, children grow up, they learn and mature, they achieve and they marry, they may even go on to have children of their own. They are always our children, even if they are 50, or 47, or 46 — the ages of my three sons. And while I happily and consciously lifted the weight of responsibility for their lives off my shoulders and mentally placed it on theirs at the time of their majority, I am still and forever will be the parent. And nothing I have ever done in my life has given me greater satisfaction.

In the course of our lives, theirs and mine, they have become my helpmates and advisers, my playmates and my friends. They now share a sense of responsibility for my life. It goes both ways, this caring. But the relationship will always be asymmetrical. Someone else once said, “If children loved their parents as much as parents love their children, the human race would come to an end. The children would never leave home.”

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I am now a member of a club that I would just as soon not have joined. It started with vomiting. I haven’t vomited in so long that my wife and daughter had never seen, or heard, the process. My daughter said I shriek in a scare-the-bats-out-of-a-tree way just before releasing the contents of my stomach. After this vomiting episode, I questioned what I’d eaten, what new allergies I might have developed or what stomach bug or virus I might have picked up. Vomiting, however, was only one of a host of symptoms, including extreme lower abdominal pain that radiated to my back.

I had kidney stones. My taller brothers don’t have kidney stones. Did I hit the genetic jackpot: crooked teeth, nearsightedness, vertically challenged and, gulp, kidney stones? Is it possible — and I’m hoping this is the case — that my diet somehow caused this excruciating experience and, as such, I’ll have some control over my kidney future?

When I said the words “kidney stones” in public, I saw a universal sympathy and support, even from people who are less than thrilled to see or hear from me.

“Oh, man, I gave birth to four kids and none of the deliveries was anything like the pain of having kidney stones,” one woman confided as she offered a reassuring squeeze of my arm.

Of course, after the little, life-altering intruders come out of our kidneys, bladders or anywhere in between, they don’t smile broadly at us, learn to walk and share an unending love — and the occasional sneer — with us. They’re just a hard pebble that uses our nerve endings like tightly wound strings on a violin of pain.

“My brother is a firefighter, built his house with his own hands and catches pitches without a baseball glove. I’ve never seen him as uncomfortable as he was when he had kidney stones. He was crying on the floor of the emergency room,” another woman recalled.

A friend said the pain embraced his abdomen, back and legs. He could barely move until he’d ejected the stones.

Other than the vomiting, the thing that struck me, literally, about my kidney stones was how impossible it was to get comfortable. No position helped: sitting, standing, praying with my head down and backside up. Pacing the room, putting my arms over my head, pulling out the hairs on my leg and curling my toes under my feet as I walked did nothing to distract me from the acute agony.

“One to 10 on a pain scale?” the emergency room nurse asked me on my first hospital visit. “11,” I muttered, as I crouched next to the hospital bed in a catcher’s position.

“Sit here, honey,” she offered.

“I can’t,” I whined.

After glancing at my face, she raced out of the room and jogged back with an IV and painkillers.

Even strangers rallied around me. I called to cancel a hotel reservation within moments of the allowable policy. When I mentioned kidney stones, the operator promised to hold the reservation past the usual time and would allow me to cancel the next day, free of charge, if I couldn’t make it. When I called the following morning after a brutal night, she wished me a quick end to my kidney stone saga.

Eventually, when it was clear my stone wasn’t rolling itself out of my body, I had a procedure to remove it with its own aftercare challenges. My recovery, despite some pain, is considerably more comfortable than the agony of a kidney stone.

I’m hoping some time down the road, a medical miracle worker turns these particular stones to rubble before they bring their unwelcome pain again.

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A makeshift memorial is erected at the scene of the fatal Cutchogue crash. Photo by Phil Corso

Tragedy hit close to home over the weekend — countless lives were shattered when an alleged drunk driver slammed into a limousine carrying a group of eight young women, killing four who hailed from our own North Shore communities.

Saturday’s Cutchogue crash captivated communities near and far. Those who knew the women, and even those who didn’t, mourned, as the crash sent shock waves across the Island.

Brittney Schulman, Lauren Baruch, Stephanie Belli and Amy Grabina were friends, daughters, girlfriends, sisters and young women just starting their adult lives. Tragic doesn’t even begin to explain what happened on that Cutchogue road.

But the women weren’t alone, and the surviving four women, who remain hospitalized as of Monday, need our support.

At a press conference on Monday, Suffolk County District Attorney Tom Spota told a crowd of reporters, many of whom came from affiliate stations and out-of-town papers, to be reasonable, in light of a recent incident in which a member of the press entered the hospital in an attempt to see one of the survivors.

“We have four who survived, who certainly have suffered horrible, horrible trauma,” Spota said. “Not only bodily trauma, but certainly mentally. And we have people — reporters — who are trying to sneak in to talk to these young women. I just think that we really should — let’s all think about it and let’s be reasonable here.”

We find these actions disrespectful to the victims and survivors and their families and do not stand behind them. As journalists, we understand the responsibility news organizations have to inform the public about events such as this, but sneaking into a hospital room is excessive, and it is not right to serve a readership at a victim’s expense.

As a community newspaper, we are protective of the neighborhoods we cover because we live here. When we get word of car crashes, many of us have to wonder if a loved one was involved. What happened on Saturday could have happened to any one of us.

To the women recovering, the families affected and the communities trying to come to terms with these losses, we will still be here to listen if and whenever you are ready to speak. Our thoughts are with you.

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These stories have been taken from the Internet:

1. WILL THE REAL DUMMY PLEASE STAND UP?
AT&T fired its president, John Walter, after nine months, saying he lacked intellectual leadership. He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it’s not Walter who’s lacking intelligence.

2. WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS
Police in Oakland, Calif., spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing 10 tear-gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them in the police line, shouting, “Please come out and give yourself up.”

3. WHAT WAS PLAN B?
An Illinois man, pretending to have a gun, kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines, wherein the kidnapper proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts.

4. THE GETAWAY
A man walked into a Kwik Stop in Topeka, Kan., and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently the take was small, so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him.

5. DID I SAY THAT?
Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn’t control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words “Give me all your money or I’ll shoot,” a man shouted, “That’s not what I said.”

6. ARE WE COMMUNICATING?
A man spoke frantically into the phone, “My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart.”
“Is this her first child?” the doctor asked. “No,” the man shouted. “This is her husband.”

7. NOT THE SHARPEST TOOL IN THE SHED
In Modesto, Calif., a man was arrested for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch without a weapon. He used a thumb and a finger to simulate a gun. Unfortunately, he failed to keep his hand in his pocket.

8. THE GRAND FINALE
Last summer, down on Lake Isabella, located in the high desert an hour east of Bakersfield, Calif., some folks, new to boating, were having a problem. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get their brand new 22-foot boat to work properly. It was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power was applied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, they crept into a nearby marina, thinking someone there may be able to tell them what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed everything in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the outdrive went up and down, and the propeller was the correct size and pitch. So, one of the marina guys jumped in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water, he was laughing so hard. Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer.

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Back when my kids were much younger, they didn’t always play with their best friends at school or even on playdates. Sometimes, their friends would push trains around a room while they would bounce a ball, connect the dots or create an original drawing. The first time I heard the term “parallel play,” I remember nodding in agreement.

Fast forward to the teenage years, and on most days parents and their children live parallel lives. We occupy the same house, we walk in and out of the same bathroom, we sometimes sit at the same table, but we don’t always connect or even interact with each other on a substantive basis.

Just to keep my kids on their toes, I sometimes ask them on a weekend how school was. The conversation goes something like this.

Me: “Hey guys, how was school?”
Kids: “Good.”
Me: Smiling.
Kids: Replaying the short tape of the conversation to see why dad is still looking at them.
Kids: “Wait, we didn’t have school today.”
Me: “Right, so tell me, how was your Saturday morning.”
Kids: “Good.”
Me: Sigh.

Recently, though, the stars all aligned for my family, giving us a chance for more than the usual brief interactions on our way to something else. My daughter started reading the John Green young-adult novel, “Paper Towns.” She finished it in little more than a day and left it on a counter. My wife and I took turns reading the same book.

When we suggested our son try reading something during the summer, he initially resisted. Given the consistent message from my wife and me, he relented and grabbed the nearest book which, as it turned out, happened to be “Paper Towns.”

What’s followed has been a bending of those parallel lines. Remarkably, our daughter who considers herself something of a morning person in the late afternoon woke up one day and entered into a discussion with me about the book. Yes, that’s right, a discussion. I consider any exchange of dialogue that involves more than two sentences, eye contact and a continuation of a conversation beyond a single room a discussion.

It’s not that she or I loved the book, or even particularly related to it. The interaction allowed us to share what we thought of the overall plot points, of the characters in the book and the story arc. We had also both read another of Green’s books, “Looking for Alaska,” and compared some themes that overlapped in both books.

In the meantime, conversations with our son about what he’s read have included a detailed recall of the most recent chapter he completed.

No, this isn’t a ringing endorsement of the book or of the author. In fact, none of the four of us is eagerly encouraging friends and family to get a copy as soon as possible so they can read it before they see the movie.

I am, however, suggesting that a family book club is a way to create a delightful and meaningful intersection of those parallel lines, enabling us to converse and connect. We have had our moments when two of us have wanted to read the book at the same time. Given our different schedules, however, that has happened considerably less often than I would have imagined.

The benefit of a book over, say, a trip to a lake or an amusement park is that the words on the page give us common ground. That becomes the starting point from which we can share our respective perspectives.

Without a specific assignment, our kids can share a relaxed view of a book. The conversations can, and have, brought us together.

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MaryEllen Elia succeeds John B. King Jr. as the state’s next education commissioner. Photo from state education department

School boards across Long Island swore in new members and re-elected trustees in the last couple of weeks to kick off a brand new school year. With every fresh start, we have an opportunity to better our communities, and ourselves, but this idea carries even greater weight when a top state education official is also starting a new term.

Our greatest hope is that our superintendents, school board trustees, parents, principals, teachers unions and other leaders will make every effort to partner with the state’s new education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia.

The New York native, who was a teacher in this state and a superintendent in Florida, took the helm from controversial former Commissioner John B. King Jr. this month. She certainly has a rough road and a lot of work ahead — agreeing to pilot an education system in which large numbers of students are refusing state exams and concerned parents are protesting the Common Core Learning Standards on a regular basis. It’s not a job many would envy.

King’s approach to implementing the Common Core left a bad taste in a lot of parents’ and educators’ mouths, but we should be careful not to allow that sourness to affect our relationship with Elia — she deserves a chance to prove herself.

We should do our best to open the dialogue and calmly communicate our grievances. We should keep open minds and be willing to collaborate.

Our children and our education system are important to our communities. In order to stay competitive globally and to further challenge our teachers and students, we need to keep as our No. 1 goal the improvement of our educational system. It sorely needs improvement.

Let’s do everything we can to build a positive relationship with this new commissioner, and thus build a more positive school environment for our students who will inherit the future.

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Loss is upsetting. Leaving a favorite scarf behind in a restaurant cloakroom is annoying. We return to the restaurant and the silk scarf that we treasured from our trip to Thailand is no longer there. Losing one’s keys, or driver’s license or even passport is aggravating. Having to remake the keys on our ring is time consuming. Going to the DMV for a new license is beyond time consuming. And applying for a new passport, always just before we need one is the epitome of high stress. But on a relative scale, these are trivial losses.
There are other kinds of loss. We might lose our job. Our company, under economic pressures, may have eliminated our department, and there are not a lot of openings for our position in other places. Such a loss might herald serial losses to come. Without a job we might not be able to pay the rent and be forced to leave our apartment, and move back with parents. Or depending on our stage of life, we might not meet our mortgage obligations with dire consequences for our family home. Financial losses can sometimes trigger the loss of a relationship if the stress becomes too great. Marriages break up, families divide, lives take unexpected turns as a result of different kinds of loss. As we know too well, the loss of a treasured relationship can be caused by any number of factors.
Sometimes people lose their way. They may think they are set on a particular path but enough obstacles may cause them to rock back on their heels and try to figure out what to do next. They may even, for a time, lose their sense of self and have to figure out who they are and what they want right from square one again.
The ultimate loss is death. The death of a loved one is irreversible, and whatever we may feel about life after death for the deceased, that person is physically lost to those who continue living. If we have lost a friend, no longer will he or she be there to listen, to lend a hand, to give advice, to suggest fun trips or provide bottomless hospitality or just precious companionship. Those whom we have loved for a long time are no longer witness to our lives, to our triumphs and our sorrows. They seemed as much a part of our lives as our limbs, but now they are severed and will no longer walk with us into the future. It is hard to comprehend. It is even harder to bear. The heart hurts.
So what do we do in the face of such loss? We tighten the inner circle that existed around the loved one by holding each other close. We dwell on the wonderful attributes of the person who is no longer with us and use them as an inspiration for ourselves. We chuckle together over the shortcomings of that person because we don’t want to lose the humanness of our friend. Indeed we may have loved him or her as much for that person’s perceived failings as for the virtues. Nor do we want to lose the truthfulness of our memories.
The deceased lives on in our heads. We can talk with that person, however one sided the conversations, ask advice and reliably supply the answers because we knew that person so well. We can remember the endless times and places we have been together, the secrets we have shared, the many ways our horizons were broadened and our knowledge increased because of our common experiences and our relationship throughout our lives.
And we can move on. Our friend would want that, in fact, insist on it. When one dies, his or her story ends and is physically left behind at that place and time. But the stories of the living continue and sooner or later must be embraced.
Goodbye, dear friend. We will miss you for the rest of our lives. Thank you for all you have been and all you have given us. It has been a blessing to know you.

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Anxious, muted conversations filled the church. People in mostly dark colors tilted their heads to the side, offering sympathetic hugs, knowing nods and long handshakes.

The attendees had come to pay their final respects to Dr. Phil Riggio, someone my family has known for more than four decades.

A husband, grandfather and friend, he shared a positive, patient energy, which made him an effective doctor. As I sat in the church, looking up at the stars and moon on the stained glass windows, I could hear his calm voice as he offered comfort to a much younger version of myself. Whenever I contracted yet another case of strep throat, he talked to me, looked me in the eye, and waited until I was ready for that unfortunate moment when he had to swab the back of my throat.

Once the mourners entered in the back of the room, the church became completely silent. Holding the hands of her children, Marge Riggio took one slow agonizing step after the other toward the front of the room. Her eyes nearly sealed shut to the painful reality, she showed the raw emotions of someone suffering from the agony of an irreversible loss. As the widow passed each row, the mourners reached for tissues and handkerchiefs. She was at the leading edge of a powerful wave of emotion for him that moved through the room one row at a time.

Whatever she or others felt about her husband going to a better place and finding everlasting peace, it was clear that those still living on Earth would feel his absence keenly.

More than half a century earlier, the Riggios were married, starting their life together. All these years later, Marge has three children and eight grandchildren she shared with her dignified, respectful and warmhearted husband. Her family embraced her, offering to hold her hand, to listen to the words mixed with soft sobs and tears, and to bring their bodies into close contact.

We all felt and will continue to feel the absence of this remarkable man who shared so much with my family and, after my father died, with my mom. The friendship my mother had with the Riggios didn’t change at all after two couples became a couple and a widow. Marge and Phil stood shoulder to shoulder with my mother, whether their shoulders were on Long Island, at an opera in New York City or waiting in line to ride an elephant in South Africa.

On this impossible day, when Marge Riggio said goodbye to the man she’d loved for more than 50 years, I could see and feel the depth of the love they shared. My wife asked me when we got married if everyone felt the same way we did when we started out; if they had the same sense of belonging and fitting together; and if they saw the whole world in each other’s faces. I can’t answer that for the rest of the world, but I could certainly see it in the way the Riggios lived.

Love is not an entitlement, given to us the same way our genes are handed down from one generation to the next. We earn it and work at it and, when it’s mutually shared and respected, we use it to power everything we do. The end of a life threatens to remove the air we breathe. Surrounded by family and friends, we dare to take those next steps, buoyed by years of memories, holding parts of those who have left us deep within our hearts.

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When does what we do matter? More importantly, how do we handle the moments that matter?

Each day, we go through so many activities that are so mundane as to require little to no concentration. We can walk to a deli, order a sandwich, nod at someone familiar on the street and engage in a conversation with our boss on a cellphone.

We have become incredibly adept at multitasking, making it so much easier not to focus on any one activity or even thought. We are not exactly grand masters of chess, thinking several moves ahead to gain an advantage over an ingenious opponent. We allow ourselves to wade through a pool of activities and decisions that are a collection of loose change jingling in our pockets.

But then there are those days, hours or moments that turn the ordinary into something filled with so much electricity that the muscles in our legs that hold us up threaten to buckle.

The thrilling and terrifying collide in our minds. Something real is at stake and the outcome isn’t predetermined, at least not as far as we know.

We need these moments that matter, even if they make our mouths dry, send pinpricks to our fingers and make us feel as if we can suddenly sense the rotation of the Earth.

Why? How does leaving our comfort zone help? Well, for starters, it reminds us of who we are and what we want. Yes, she might say “no” and yes, we might not pass our driver’s test. So what? If this is what we want, the only mistake would be avoiding trying to get what we want because we might not get it. It’s easy to believe we are not ready or that we are not good enough. Why not roll up our sleeves and give it a shot?

Maybe if we could convert all that energy and anxiety into something else, we’d feel empowered by big moments. Those pinpricks in our fingers might make them even faster and more nimble than we could imagine, allowing us to play the piano more efficiently than we ever have, while that racing heart and dry tongue could be just the kind of internal obstacles we need to overcome to
believe in ourselves. When these telltale signs return, they might become familiar companions on the road to something bigger and better.

Butterflies feel strange in our stomachs because they give us the sensation we don’t get when we turn the ignition on for our car, when we pick up the phone and dial a number we know by heart or when we walk down a familiar hallway at work to hear our colleagues share views they have constantly offered for years.

Maybe we need a few more butterflies in our lives. We need to feel something unusual and exciting, something bigger and brighter and something that shakes us up. Maybe we need to imagine seeing those butterflies outside of our stomachs and fluttering around us.

While we take for granted that those butterflies are a sign of nerves, they are also an interesting choice. Butterflies fall in the same category as bunnies. We like them. If we can somehow imagine them fluttering just outside us, circling a room or a field, we can breathe deeply in the moment.

When we look back on any given year, we can gain a new appreciation and perspective on these opportunities. They may not only define a time, but they may also help remind us that our lives are not just about the ordinary — they are about embracing and conquering the moments that matter.

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When I come across a wonderful story, I like to share it with you, and so I will tell you today about a Briton named Nicholas Winton. You probably don’t recognize his name because he told no one about his extraordinary deeds, not even his wife. It was only after she found a scrapbook, in the attic of their home in 1988, that the world began to learn of his courage and humanity defying Hitler on the eve of World War II.

Winton was a London stockbroker in December 1938 and about to go to Switzerland on a ski vacation when a friend, who was aiding refugees in the newly annexed Czechoslovakia, urged him to come to Prague.

There, Winton found huge numbers of refugees, who were trying to escape Hitler, living in “appalling conditions,” according to The New York Times obituary on July 2 that told of Winton’s life. There was little hope of escape for those on the run because other countries had closed their borders, especially to Jewish immigration, except for a unique effort that was mounted by Britain. Kindertransport was an attempt to rescue unaccompanied Jewish children up to the age of 17 if they had a host family willing to accept them. The Refugee Children’s Movement in Britain reached into Germany and Austria and according to The Times, some 10,000 children were saved before the war began.

There was no equivalent effort made in Czechoslovakia, despite the clear danger evidenced by such horrors as Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass” — that had shortly before Winton’s trip struck Jewish shops, homes and synagogues in Germany and Austria, As Winton said in a Times interview in 2001, “One saw the problem there, that a lot of these children were in danger, and you had to get them to what was called a safe haven, and there was no organization to do that.”

That is what Winton did: He created an operation that worked with furious speed, racing against the murderous rampage of the Nazi war machine. The modest stockbroker, albeit from a blue-blooded background, cleverly used every means at his disposal, including “dangers, bribes, forgery, secret contacts with the Gestapo, nine railroad trains, an avalanche of paperwork and a lot of money,” as described in the obit.

The volunteers called themselves the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, Children’s Section and received aid from the Refugee Children’s Movement. They made appeals in newspaper ads, also church and synagogue bulletins, for host families and money in Britain, and in Prague “cultivated the chief of the Gestapo, Karl Bömelburg — they called him ‘the criminal rat’ after his inspector’s rank of kriminalrat — and arranged for forged transit papers and bribes to be passed to key Nazi and Czech railway officials, who threatened to halt trains or seize the children unless they were paid off,” according to The Times. As word spread and desperate parents brought their children to a rented storefront office, the long lines attracted Gestapo attention. “Perilous confrontations were resolved with bribes,” according to The Times. When the money ran out, Winton used his own.

Can you imagine the searing pain involved with giving up your children to strangers? “Winton’s Children” numbered 669 lives saved. The survivors include the film director Karel Reisz — “Saturday Night and “Sunday Morning” (1960), “Isadora” (1968) and “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981) — and other celebrities. Today there are some 6,000 descendants.

Winton was a most reluctant hero, not wishing to have his wife, Grete Gjelstrup, a Dane he married in 1948, tell anyone. She gave the scrapbook to a Holocaust historian, and then newspaper articles, books, television programs and movies ensued. He was showered with honors, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, astonished all the while at the fuss being made.

Sir Nicholas Winton was the son of a merchant banker of German-Jewish origin who had converted to Christianity. He had grown up in a safe and comfortable world of privilege, yet readily risked it all to help others in dire peril. He would serve as a Royal Air Force officer in the war, and later worked for refugee organizations and a charity that assisted the elderly. For all his exceptional efforts, he was richly rewarded with a long life. He died last week at the age of 106.

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