Erna Wertheim tells a reporter she’d love to talk about her upcoming 100th birthday, but not just yet. “The weather is so beautiful today,” she says. “You don’t know how long it will last.”
And with that, Wertheim heads out of her San Mateo apartment for a winter’s stroll. It’s part of a daily exercise routine Wertheim has kept up for decades. Many, many decades.
She turned 100 on Friday, Jan. 26, and was honored at a party thrown by her friends and family.
“I’m feeling pretty good, considering my age” adds Wertheim. “No complaints, although once in a while you feel this or that.”
Born in Munich, Germany, in 1907, Erna Lehrberger enjoyed an idyllic Bavarian childhood, excelling in sports and academics. Her family was fairly well to do, thanks to the famed Lehrberger clothing manufacturing company founded, she says, “by my grandfather in ’72.”
Meaning 1872.
In 1926, she was named sales manager for the company, a rare post for a German women in those days. A few years later, while on vacation in Switzerland, she met her husband-to-be, Herman Wertheim. The couple married in 1936.
Herman was, “a very nice, very capable man,” remembers Wertheim. “He grew up in a small town where the education wasn’t as good, but he educated himself and he was a very good businessman. He knew a joke for every occasion.”
As Hitler consolidated power, the Wertheims sensed big trouble ahead, and in 1936 they immigrated to America, along with their baby daughter. They arrived in San Francisco during the Great Depression.
But the two were resourceful. They quickly mastered English and went into the shmata business. That evolved into a cleaning store on Clement and, ultimately, a real estate business, Wertheim Realty, located on Geary.
“[San Francisco] wasn’t that much different,” she says of the old days. “It was such a wonderful city, so self-contained. It used to be much nicer — however, I don’t think there is any city would compare.”
The couple folded their tent in 1962, and enjoyed a happy retirement golfing, swimming and playing bridge. They were active temple members of Congregation Emanu-El. Both Herman and Erna swam regularly well into their late 90s. Herman died in 2004 at the age of 102.
These days, Erna enjoys spending time with her family, which includes her daughter, Lee, and son-in-law Frank Battat, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Daughter Lee Battat attributes her mother’s long life and good health to an unflagging interest in the world around her. “She loves to read books, and she so enjoys the symphony and opera,” notes Battat. “She is worldly yet down to earth, fun to be with and is adored by her family.”
Adds the birthday girl, “I still enjoy life as much as I can. There are certain limitations, but I walk quite a bit. I do take a walker for safety’s sake.”