ROWE — Former town postmaster Florence M. Bjork, Rowe’s oldest resident, recently celebrated her 100th birthday with friends and family.
According to her son, Alan Bjork, she was born in New York City in 1916.
“Her mother had a ticket for the Titanic, but at the last minute, she sold it to her friend who wanted to join her sister, who was already aboard the ship,” he said.
Mrs. Bjork attended schools in Long Island and worked at the Commercial National Bank and Trust on Wall Street as a stenographer during the Great Depression.
She married Wendell W. Bjork on June 12, 1943, in Wilmington, N.C., before he left for Europe, to be a radar officer with the gun battalion that landed with World War II invasion forces on D-Day, June 6, 1944, on Omaha Beach in Normandy. Wendell Bjork died in 1988.
The couple moved to Rowe in 1945, where Mr. Bjork was appointed Rowe’s postmaster in 1946. His mother had also been the town’s postmaster. Mr. Bjork also ran the town’s Village Store, in the same house where Mrs. Bjork currently lives. He retired as postmaster in 1973, and Mrs. Bjork took over the job until her own retirement in 1980. In 1983, the couple closed their store and the post office was moved to the Town Hall.
During her many years in Rowe, Mrs. Bjork was elected three times to be town treasurer; she was also town auditor, selectmen’s clerk, and an original charter member of the Rowe Historical Society. Mrs. Bjork has loaned many items of an old country store to be displayed at the Kemp-McCarthy Memorial Museum of the Rowe Historical Society.
She is the current holder of the town’s “Most Senior Citizen Ceremonial Cane.”
Her two sons, Alan and Tim, also live in Rowe, and her granddaughter, Jasmine Bjork-Regan, lives in Waterford, Conn.
On her 100th birthday, “She received many beautiful cards, gifts and flowers, which were very much appreciated,” Alan Bjork said.