Helen Algier didn't think she'd be celebrating her 100th birthday, which is today.

Algier, a 15-year resident of Landis Homes, has been asking her daughter to look in their family Bible to make sure she really is 100.

"We never know" how long we'll live, Algier said. "The good Lord has been good to me."

Algier goes out to lunch almost every day to see people.

"That's what keeps her going," one of her daughters, Mary Ann Tolin, said.

Algier also enjoys jigsaw puzzles, cryptograms, pinochle, the Hand and Foot card game, knitting and crocheting, and she's now making a hat and scarf. Previously, she sewed, too.

Born in Enola on Oct. 6, 1908, Algier was the second of eight children of Aaron and Emma McCowan. She had two brothers and five sisters, including a set of twins, all of whom are now dead.

Because Algier's father was a Pennsylvania Railroad conductor, the family moved from Enola to Downingtown when Algier was a baby.

She attended Downingtown grade schools and graduated from Downingtown High School in 1927. She then attended Banks Business School in Philadelphia, using her father's free passes on the railroad for transportation.

After business school, Algiers worked as a stenographer for Downingtown Manufacturing Co., which made paper-mill machinery.

"I wrote shorthand letters for about five or six men," earning $12 per week, she said.

In 1929, just 10 days before the stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression, she married her high school sweetheart, Norman Eugene Algier, who was two years younger than she was.

Because both Algier and her husband, a salesman for Walker Lumberyard in Downingtown, were working, the Depression didn't affect them as much as it did others.

"But things were so expensive," she said.

Algier worked from 1928 until 1934, when she had her first baby.

"I had to quit because I was having a baby. They let (pregnant women) work today, but not years ago," she said.

Algier and her husband had two daughters, Norma Cahill of Massachusetts and Tolin of Leola. They have six grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren.

The family moved to Sixth Street in Lancaster when Norman became a salesman for Delmarva. They then lived in Wheatland Hills for 50 years. Norman died in 1998.

Algier worked as a part-time sales clerk for the former Tim Doutrich's men's clothing store in Lancaster Shopping Center for five years.

"I got the job because he lived across the street from us," she said.

She learned to drive at age 46.

"My husband told me I had to learn," Algier said, because he traveled quite a bit as a salesman, and being able to drive would give her some independence.

Although they didn't travel much, the couple did take a trip to Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks.

In 1999, after her husband had died, Algier flew to Florida for a visit with her sister.

Algier is a member of James Buchanan chapter of Eastern Star and Covenant United Methodist Church, where she previously had been active as treasurer of her Sunday school class. Years ago, she also was a member of the Republican Club.

E-mail: lvaningen@lnpnews.com