LAUDERHILL, Fla. — From coast to coast, family and friends are celebrating DeVera Shankman, who is turning 105 years young!
“They tell me I’m 105. I don’t believe it,” she told Local 10 News.
Shankman was born on Sept. 22, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York.
“I feel 80. Except for my legs, I’m 65,” Shankman said.
Shankman has lived quite a life so far. She moved to South Florida in 1951 with her husband, Harold.
“Well, I loved the climate, the people,” she said.
Shankman used to work on South Beach during the Magic City era as a manicurist.
“She remembers everyone,” her son, Edward Shankman, said.
Her 85-year old son told Local 10 that his mother is a “riot.”
“There’s stories we can’t tell,” he joked.
Who can tell those stories? Her eldest granddaughter.
“So she’s a gambler,” Sherri Weiss said.
DeVera Shankman even takes her grandkids gambling with her.
Weiss and her mother, Shelly Parsons, said their mother and grandmother enjoys blackjack the most and loves to go to the Hard Rock on $5 day.
And Shankman never misses out on an ice cream sundae, her granddaughter said.
Jokes aside, there is more than a century of history and tradition.
At one point, Shankman was the president of the Jewish War Veterans and countless other organizations.
“Any organization I belong to, I was president and that made me happy,” she said.
There’s, of course, so much more to her life. Shankman said a major milestone was receiving a proclamation from a Florida senator to notes from Gov. Josh Shapiro and Hillary Clinton.
The best one, however, was from Lauderhill, where Shankman now calls home as September 21st was proclaimed “Grandma Vera Day.”
Shankman has eight grandkids, 16 great-grandkids and four great-great grandchildren.
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