© AP Photo/Rich SchultzAstrid Thoening celebrates her 100th birthday while working as the receptionist for the Thornton Agency in Parsippany, N.J., Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009. Thoening has worked for the same company for the last 32 years.
Astrid Thoenig got dressed, went to work and sat at her desk smiling Thursday as she slid her finger gently under the envelope flap of yet another identical birthday card. They don't make that many that say "Happy 100th."
Thoenig was interrupted by a steady stream of deliverymen bringing bouquets, chocolate-dipped strawberries and stacks of cards to the Thornton Insurance Co. in Parsippany where she's been answering phones, keeping financial records, handling payroll and typing up documents for more than 30 years.
"It's another day - it's hard to explain," Thoenig said of turning 100. "I don't feel old, and I don't think old."
Born Sept. 24, 1909, in Bloomfield, N.J., Thoenig's earliest memories start in 1918, when she witnessed something so traumatic, "it erased all memories of my childhood before that."
"I remember coming down the stairs from my bedroom and saw these two coffins in the living room: one white, for my sister, and the other for the grown person," she said, recalling how the flu pandemic of 1918 killed her father and her 10-year-old sister within hours of one another. "To see my father and sister - of all the things I can't remember - that's very vivid in my mind."
