Elkins Park resident turning 100 on April 5, still ‘cutting a rug’

Betty Matusow Perlmutter, an Elkins Park resident, will turn 100 years old on Friday, April 5, the Chestnut Hill Local reported.

According to the article, Perlmutter was in a coma and on life support at the age of 87, and says she has since been “born again”. She goes to exercise classes, attends book clubs and does arts and crafts. She just finished reading “Harlem Shuffle,” a novel by Colson Whitehead.

“There is so much joy and wonder in everything. I learned a lot from my daughter. I now talk to family members as friends, not just as family,” she said. “I am so grateful that they want to spend time with me, not just tolerate me. I now can see things I never saw before.”

She also reads The Philadelphia Inquirer seven days a week and is a big fan of the Eagles, 76ers, and Phillies, the article said.

Perlmutter, now a great grandmother, moved with her family to Wyncote in 1964.

“I was very upset about that because I wanted to go to Girls High School, but I was not allowed to go since we lived just outside the city,” her daughter, Harriet Zilber, said. “We went to Elkins Park Jr. High and Cheltenham High School instead.”

Jack and Betty Perlmutter, circa 1959

From 1979 to 2004, Perlmutter and her husband of 54 years, Jack, a World War II veteran, lived in an apartment in Wyncote Towers until his passing in 2004. She stayed put until 2017, then moved into her current Elkins Park residence.

Perlmutter’s son, Lee, was a volunteer chief of the Willow Grove Fire Department who died at 67.

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Photos: Chestnut Hill Local