Mathilda Kolt

"Supercentenarian" is the term wordsmiths use to describe Mathilda Kolt, who was 110 years and 164 days old at the time of her passing. Growing up, everyone knew her as Tillie. As a senior citizen, Mathilda still had a steel-trap memory for names and faces. And as a senior, she was almost always smiling and ever friendly. But she was far more complex than that.

Tillie was born in Passaic, N.J., Feb. 10, 1914, four years before a different devastating pandemic, influenza, the misnamed "Spanish flu." How did she end up starting out in New Jersey, when she was conceived in New York City? A tenement fire destroyed the residence of her parents, Isadore and Rebecca Greenberg. Rebecca was pregnant with Tillie when the firemen carried her down the fire escape. The Greenbergs fled the Big Apple for the safety of the Garden State. And for good reason, her son, Jeffrey Kolt, would say Tillie was always grateful for firemen. She still felt the connection. She owed them her life.

Eventually the Greenbergs settled in Cleveland, near relatives who had transplanted to Ohio from Russia. In Russia, Isadore was a skilled tailor and the son of a factory owner. The factory produced clothes. The factory owner did not approve of Rebecca, who worked at the factory, or Isadore's and Rebecca's impending marriage. Years later, in America, Isadore and Rebecca would take him in.

The Greenbergs, by then a couple with eight children, were by no means wealthy. Closer to poor. Isadore was skilled, but in Cleveland he inadvertently crossed a picket line. "Scab!" the strikers called him, but he spoke only Yiddish and did not understand. The result: He could never join the tailors union. Instead, he became a peddler with a horse and wagon.

Tillie was the third youngest. From top to bottom, they were Mollie, Edward "Ed,”, Mildred, Sylvia, Max, Mathilda, Helen and Ruth. Tillie is the last of her generation, although her sisters Helen, nearly 102, and Ruth, a few weeks shy of 100, gave her a run for her money.

The family was close-knit. They really loved each other. The kids shared food and beds, and they were entertainment for each other. They'd sit around the large dinner table in the evening and read to each other from books. Or they'd recite what they'd memorized from those books.

In those days, Tillie's specialty was poetry. She knew all the poems by heart. As an adult, she didn't just stick to poems. She loved histories and Robert Louis Stevenson. She loved languages. She was fluent in English and Yiddish, but she also read French, Spanish, Hebrew and Russian. Years later, she would make the librarians in Geauga County track down dual-language books with a column, let's say, in French, and a second column offering an English translation. You might call her a polymath. The "math" in polymath is deceiving, although Tillie was also mathematically inclined. A polymath is a person of great or varied learning.

She loved Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind." The movie too. She was a GWTW collector. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh sprawled across the back of her couch. In cloth. Not the actual actors.

How did she meet her future husband Alfred Kolt? Tillie and Al each told different stories. They both graduated from Glenville High School, but in different years and probably, unknowingly, passed each other in hallways. Tillie's version of their first meeting was far more prosaic: They met at a dance. Al's version was far more interesting, far more romantic, and the story you should believe.

Al was sitting in the barber's chair. A pretty girl passed outside the barbershop. Al noticed and commented to no one, "I'd like to meet her." In the next chair sat Max Greenberg. "That's my sister!" And Max gave Tillie's address to Alfred.

That's not the end of the story. Al bought a box of candy. He put on a suit. He went over to the Greenbergs. Tillie wasn't home, but the mother, Rebecca Greenberg, was and Al gave her the box of candy to give to Tillie. Rebecca was confused by the man in the suit. When Tillie came home, Rebecca said a delivery man had delivered candy.

That was around 1936. They dated. They married. The marriage lasted 59 years and only ended with Al's passing Oct. 3, 1996. Jacqueline “Jackie,” as lovely as her mother, was born Oct. 6, 1939. Jeffrey, “Jeff,” good looking like his dad, was born June 5, 1944, the day before D-Day. When church bells rang on D-Day to celebrate the invasion of Normandy, Tillie honestly believed it was connected to Jeffrey's birth - maybe it was.

She adored her children. That didn't stop her from locking Jeff out of the house because she insisted he go to Hebrew school , Sunday school and Shabbat services seven days a week, he told her recalcitrant son. She could be a strict disciplinarian, far stricter than her softer-hearted husband. But she would do anything for her children. She took a seasonal job demonstrating Kenner Toys at May Co. to pay Jeff's tuition at Ohio State University. Jeff went on to be a lawyer, partially thanks to the Easy-Bake Oven.

Tillie was raised in an Orthodox home, and the Kolt home on Edgerton Road was somewhere between Orthodox and conservative. Tillie kept kosher. She would wind up her days in assisted living in the Weils, now known as Eliza at Chagrin Falls. Tillie signed up for the Weils because it was a Kosher facility. The Weils didn't stay kosher, and Tillie switched from meat to fish. Kosher all her life.

She loved to shop for clothes. Perhaps she had "tailor" in her blood. Jackie married Bill Sadock, and his family owned lingerie factories in Berwick, Pa. Jackie loved to shop too. Tillie and Al would make frequent pilgrimages to Pennsylvania. Al would bring kosher meat to beleaguered Berwick, hardly a bastion of kashrut. The Kolts would return with trunk-loads of women's clothing. Both Tillie and Jackie had an exquisite sense of style. When Tillie moved to an apartment after Al's passing, the rooms were filled with metal clothing racks, crammed with the latest fashions.

A summary of her life? In no particular order: an insatiable appetite for knowledge, an emphasis on education and a love of her family and of Judaism.

Judaism. She never drove, but that didn't keep her from attending synagogue. She started off at Silver's Temple. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver was so respected that Isadore and Rebecca Greenberg, Orthodox Jews that they were, sent their children to a Reform synagogue for their religious education. Tillie's last synagogue was B'nai Jeshurun Congregation in Pepper Pike. In between, she and Al and Jeff and Jackie were members of Community Temple in University Heights. Tillie and her sisters, Mollie and Mil, all belonged to Community, and the families would pray together on Saturdays. That was a hallmark of Tillie's life. There was always that sense of camaraderie, the camaraderie that began as children, reading from books around a dinner table.

Mathilda is survived by her son Jeffrey and his significant other, Nelly Russell, who Tillie sometimes treated even better than she did Jeff. She also leaves behind her son-in-law Bill Sadock, Jackie Sadock died in 2022; grandchildren Mark Sadock and Jennifer (Steve) Friedland; and great-grandchildren Sophia (Zack) Jones, Joseph, Adin and Tylie. Three generations, and Tillie loved them all.

Graveside services and interment will be held at 3 p.m. July 28 at Mt. Olive Cemetery in Solon. Arrangements under the direction of Berkowitz-Kumin-Bookatz Memorial Chapel.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in Tillie’s memory to Eliza at Chagrin Falls (elizajennings.org/donate/) or to the Solon Senior Center (shorturl.at/d3x02).

A memorial celebration of her 110 years is tentatively planned for Sept. 1 at the Solon Recreation Center, where Tillie avidly played mahjong.

To view Tillie's graveside service on our You Tube Channel please go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv0Rc5XYm2E&list=UU6QUXgZaYZyDgMOgpCrYMow&index=2