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"I had a neighbor who everyone loved who died at the age of 42," Lein said. "… I had in my mind that I would die at that age."
Fate had other plans for Lein, who is celebrating her 100th today.
Her secret?
"Exercise, diet and a personal relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ."
When she was young, Lein said she enjoyed high jumping and playing tennis and baseball. Now she said she just likes to watch the Philadelphia Phillies play.
An avid reader, Lein enjoys nonfiction — the Bible, anything related to the Bible and biographies. She also likes comics including Peanuts. Lein said she has a collection of the Peter Plink newspaper comic strips one of her sisters cut out for her.
Because she has macular degeneration, Lein is unable to read as well as she used to, she said.
"It's no fun now," she said. "I have to have a magnifying glass to (read)."Despite her condition, she still enjoys word games such as Scrabble.
Lein also has enjoyed sightseeing, traveling across Canada by rail before she married and traveling across the United States by automobile with her late husband, the Rev. Harold F. Lein.
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Born in Churchtown on March 12, 1908, Helen Lein was the youngest of 10 children of John and Emma Frances Hertzler. She had six sisters and three brothers.
She said she was raised by an older sister in Chester County.
She started school in a one-room schoolhouse in Laurel, south of Coatesville. Lein remembers that she had to cross the Brandywine River on a swinging bridge to get to school.
She later attended Modena School, a four-room school in East Fallowfield Township.
"I was there when word came that the first world war was over," said Lein, who was in fourth grade at the time. "They marched us up (a couple miles) to Coatesville on a Friday. But it was a false alarm, and we went back to school. Then on Monday the word came again and we went back again. We marched again to Coatesville, parading up the streets and waving flags."
(51) (23) (3) (3)After Lein graduated from Coatesville High School in 1925, she attended West Chester Normal School. The school became a college in her final year there in 1928.
She took extra courses and, in 1936, earned her bachelor's of science degree in English and social studies, enabling her to teach first through 12th grades.
Lein first taught at the same school she attended in East Fallowfield, then at Unionville Junior High School and for two years in a rural school in the Village of Emily, Bucks County.
From there, she returned to East Fallowfield School, where she was teaching when they received word about the end of World War II. There was no parade to Coatesville as there was at the end of World War I, Lein said.
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Lein left her teaching career in 1945 to assist the pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Bristol.
Among other duties, she supervised the Sunday school teachers at Calvary.
Lein put her teaching skills to use as a short-term missionary in Ecuador in 1962.
She returned to Calvary Baptist Church for a year before going back to teaching in the public schools, retiring from Rainbow School in Coatesville in 1973.
After retiring, Lein finished a term teaching at a Navajo reservation in New Mexico.
Lein met her husband in 1976 at Westwood Union Church in Coatesville. Harold Lein, who was a retired pastor, had moved from southern New Jersey to Coatesville with his daughter.
The couple married in 1977. They moved to Bowmansville in 1988 and then to Calvary Fellowship Homes, Manheim Township, in 2004.
Harold died Jan. 20, 2005, just four days shy of his 100th birthday. He was buried on his birthday.
Lein has a stepdaughter, a stepson, nine stepgrandchildren, 23 stepgreat-grandchildren and a stepgreat-great-grandchild.
E-mail: lvaningen@lnpnews.com
