Embracing her age, Dorothy Zboyan turns 100 on a motorcycle
By Linda Alice Dewey
Sun contributor
As of Oct. 29, Glen Arbor’s Dorothy Zboyan has lived for a century! But she’s not your typical little old lady. Yes, she’s little. At one time five feet tall, she’s well below that now. And she’ll be the first to tell you (joyfully) that she’s old. But her thick salt and pepper hair has yet to turn white, she dresses up, speaks with gusto, her memory seems intact, she keeps up with the conversation—and she embraces life.
“I was born on False Armistice Day of World War I,” she says, the day everyone first heard the Great War—World War I—was over. While she was being born inside the hospital, her mother could hear everyone “yelling and celebrating” outside.
Dorothy’s earliest memory is “playing under the dining room table at my grandmother’s house.” Her family moved from Chicago to Oak Park, IL when she was five, and she lived there until she married her first husband in 1940. “Our home was on a 25-foot lot,” she says. “You could almost reach your neighbors out our window. We had an alley and a garage.”
Kids had a wonderful time growing up in the 1920s. “We always played in the streets; that was our fun time. When our parents called us, we went in.” What did they play? “Baseball, things like that. Jump rope, double jump.” There were lots of kids in the neighborhood. “We knew everybody on the block.” She recalls the family’s first telephone—a four-party line—and running to pick up ice chips that fell when the ice man brought the ice for the ice box.
As a teenager during the Depression, she wore hand-me-down clothes. “I remember when I got my first new dress. It was just so exciting,” she laughs. “I was in high school.”
“My dad, during the Depression, he never lost his job, but he was cut back because of the war.” Her mother didn’t work. “Back in those days,” she explains, “women didn’t work.”
Dorothy lost a nephew in World War II. Life was hard then with food and gas rationing. A newlywed then, she says, “My husband had a motorcycle, so we rode that a lot. Less gas,” she chuckles.
Her favorite time in her life? “I think our joy always has to be when our babies are born and our children are little.” She and her husband Warren Gruschow had a son and daughter; he died of a heart attack when they were 7 and 8.
She met her second husband, Joe Zboyan, when she worked in the cafeteria at her children’s school in Barrington, IL, where he also worked.
Moving to Leelanau
Dorothy’s first husband, Warren, had family in Leelanau and had introduced Dorothy to this area. Then she and Joe visited Glen Lake around 1965, and he loved it here.
After working in the school system his entire career, Joe was ready for a change. “We stayed at the [Footehills—with an e] motel,” she explains,” and it was for sale. So he just decided, ‘I think I’ll quit my job’.”
“He thought it would be easy. Didn’t have a clue,” she laughs.
That was in 1965. For 23 years after that, Dorothy cooked and washed all the dishes in the coffee shop, while her husband took care of the motel. “I never worked so hard in my life,” she states, “and I never did have more than one helper.” But one of the biggest benefits was the people. “I met so many wonderful people in the coffee shop,” she recalls.
A week after her husband passed away in 1988, “someone called me on the phone and asked if the motel was for sale, and I said, ‘Make me an offer,’ and they made me an offer, and I took it.”
Dorothy is happy the motel and restaurant are still operating the way she and Joe had it, with the restaurant just open for breakfast and lunch. She also thinks the owners are smart not to remodel it. She still often goes there to eat. “They have my menu hanging up on the wall,” she says, “in back.”
Fun at 100!
Dorothy lives alone now in a small home just down the road from the motel. Although her family lives in other places, she’s not worried. The members of the Glen Lake Community Reformed Church take good care of her. “All I have to do is call church, and they come in and help.”
Spirituality is very important in Dorothy’s life now. In fact, she will tell you it makes all the difference. She became born-again at the age of 65 when she was watching a Billy Graham Crusade on TV. It changed everything, she says. Now she attends Sunday school, church, and a Sunday evening Bible study. Then she goes to two more Bible studies during the week: one in Maple City, the other in Traverse City. She’s been going to one of them “every Thursday except Thanksgiving” for 30 of her 35 years as a Christian.
At 100 and counting, only a few physical problems ail her. She does walk with a cane—her knees aren’t so good any more, she says. And she has a bit of macular degeneration, though she has no trouble reading. What’s most remarkable? Aside from shots in her eyes, she takes no medication.
What does she do to stay in such good health? “I keep active,” she answers. “You know, that’s the one thing you have to do; you can’t quit doing what you’ve always done. And the other thing is, once you get old, you have to admit it. And then, getting old is one of the best things that ever happened to your life, especially if you’re a born-again believer—that’s an important thing, too. But once I admitted I was old … I’ve been having so much fun since I’m old!”
It’s quite a message. “You know, people won’t admit they’re old, and the culture doesn’t want you to be old. They want you to keep trying to be young. The ads—they’re trying to sell you products to make you look like you’re young. But once you make up your mind you’re old, you’re set free!”
Dorothy didn’t stop trying to be young until she was in her early 90s. She waited too long, she says. But then, something clicked. “I just realized that it was so stupid to be doing what I was doing,” she admits, laughing. “I didn’t know how much fun it would be! I really didn’t.”
What’s so much fun about being old? “Well, you’re free. You don’t have to do what anybody tells you [that] you should do any more, and you don’t have to try to be who you’re not, and you can do what you want to do, when you want to do it.”
One of the things Dorothy says she would love to do again is ride a motorcycle. “Still to this day, I love motorcycles—I’d go for a ride any time!” she declares. “One man took me all around both of these lakes on a motorcycle. It was so much fun! That was probably eight or ten years ago.”
So the evening before her birthday more than a hundred family, friends, and neighbors attending a party in her honor at her church got to see Dorothy enter the church on a motorcycle. Her son, daughter, their spouses, and several of her 15 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren had come to Glen Arbor from Grand Rapids and Texas and all stayed at (of course) the Foothills.
Even though her family doesn’t live in the area, Dorothy is happy she’s here year-round. “Yeah, I love it, being here,” she says. “Everybody raves about the scenery, but I say I like the people up here.”
