I wasn’t looking for Mrs. Newman, but I found her anyway. I found her right near the candy store where I had left her in my memories.

When my husband asked what I’d like to do for my birthday last week, I told him I wanted to walk to the candy store from Point Stockholm to Greenhurst again, a treasured memory from my childhood. It was a splendid walk for a pack of kids, beginning with a stroll through a field of wildflowers–goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace–until we got to a little creek. Sometimes the creek was dry and sometimes it was swollen with rain, a reality that determined how adventurous our journey would be.

This was a time in America when kids roamed the world freely, through woods and fields, splashing through waterways, as unencumbered as a summer day. We were vagabonds, really, in jeans and sneakers, encouraged by our parents to go out and play.

Once we passed the creek on our childhood journeys, we’d emerge into the world again, cutting through three or four backyards before we reached the post office. The post office doubled as a small store and the Newman’s were in charge of both. There wasn’t a kid for miles who hadn’t lined up to have their penny candy counted, leaving for home with little brown bags in hand.

The Newman’s were the loveliest couple. They’d patiently count out all our loot–tootsie rolls and Swedish fish and licorice—all for a penny apiece. They never hurried our gang of kids, never complained about our exuberance. I have always been able to conjure up their sweet faces and their patient, sincere demeanors in my memories. You can imagine the hundreds of trips we took to the store over a decade; they were very familiar to us.

At the end of the candy store trek on my birthday last week, a man standing in a yard we were cutting through befriended us, and when I told him about our strange birthday errand, he pointed to a house near the post office and said, “Mrs. Newman is still alive. She’s 104!”

You can imagine how surprised I was to hear that an adult so prominent in my young childhood memories was still gracing the world with her presence. It felt like serendipity. My husband and I sat in her kitchen for an hour, reliving the old days at the lake. She is the last of a breed of lake people that I once knew so well–content with simple lives, kind, practical and proud.

She was born in 1920 and grew up on a 50-plus acre farm on Dutch Hollow Road. Her family grew their own food, and raised animals, like pigs and cows. She lived an enviable life–a farm to table life–as a child, with wholesome food, extended family living nearby–circumstances that we know today can extend one’s longevity.

After she married, she would live the rest of her life in Greenhurst, running the post office and small store with her husband George from 1958 to 2002. I can’t think of a better life, raising a family among the leafy green enclave of Greenhurst, filled with daily purpose, playing an important role in the lives of their neighbors and community. Mr. Newman was once offered a job in another state, and he said, “And leave Greenhurst?”

The couple was a witness to the world’s iconic events through the years. Mrs. Newman’s relatives served in both World Wars–her husband was drafted into World War ll, although, thankfully he was stationed at a base in Brooklyn, New York, where he repaired airplanes. And part of Mrs. Newman’s life was witnessing the village kids grow up through her special lens as the candy store lady.

She is as beautiful today as ever, with lovely skin, clear eyes and manicured nails. Her memory is amazing, as she recounts some special snippets from her life. We laugh as she recalls the child or two who would come into the store with a nickel and struggle for an hour to pick out their five pieces of candy. She tells me Swedish fish were among the top sellers at the store–a statistic I can appreciate.

We both seem to mourn the past in the same way, as we chat about the people who have come and go from around the lake through the years. She says there are fewer year-rounders and lots of weekend people now from out of state and she is melancholy about it. I say that it’s amazing the lake stayed the same for as long as it did, but like me, she doesn’t always recognize the world she lives in. The landscape she looked out upon for most of her life has changed. It’s not an easy thing to reconcile.

She was going through boxes of memories before we arrived, deciding what to keep. She notes that what means a whole lot to one person isn’t always a treasure to another. But before I left, I let her know she was a treasure to so many of us. To not be forgotten is an extraordinary thing.