Members of the Schoonmaker family gathered in Pine Bush last Monday, November 25 to celebrate the 109th birthday of Lillian Schoonmaker, a longtime resident of Pine Bush, Shawangunk, and Gardiner. Whether she was a diligent farmer, a colorful quilter, an excellent cook, or an anchor to her family, Schoonmaker has led an exciting and fulfilling life for a hundred years and counting.

Schoonmaker was born on November 25, 1915, in Pine Bush, and was the daughter of the late Oscar and Dora McEwen. Growing up in the hamlet, she balanced her time working on her family’s farm, attending the Wallkill Central School District, and having fun with her siblings Janette, Marietta, and John. Some of Schoonmaker’s fondest childhood activities included riding horses, ice skating, and sledding down snowy hills.

Schoonmaker married her husband, Spencer, on February 18, 1940, and the couple expanded their family with two daughters: Sharon Schoonmaker in 1944 and Beverly Strong in 1948. In 1940, Schoonmaker and her family inherited her parents-in-law’s dairy farm, Bonney Brook, in Gardiner; she worked tirelessly on the farm, harvesting vegetables from her garden to feed her family. She and Spencer closed down the farm in 1958 to open an excavation business, with Schoonmaker helping her husband with bookkeeping and landscaping.

In her community, Schoonmaker was an active member of the Shawangunk Reformed Church, cooking for the church’s senior citizen luncheons, and a member of the Shawangunk Valley Fire Company Ladies Auxiliary. Her favorite hobbies include cooking, gardening, sewing, and crocheting; she has made many clothes, curtains, and quilts over her lifetime.

“She used to cook for the senior citizen luncheons at the church, she was cooking for those through her 80s and even 90s,” said Morgan Strong, Schoonmaker’s grandson. “We always told her that she should sit down with the seniors and have the luncheon, but she just wanted to cook because she ‘didn’t want to sit down with those old fogies.’”

Above all, Schoonmaker is a dedicated and loving mother, wife, grandmother, and daughter-in-law to her family. As the household’s matriarch, she juggled cooking, chores, and farm responsibilities, all while making sure her loved ones were healthy and happy.
Morgan is very close with his grandmother and considers her the “glue” to his family. Some of his fondest memories with her include going to church and learning how to “cook;” in the latter’s case, Morgan was about three or four years old, shucking corn with his grandmother on a beautiful, sunny afternoon.

“I grew up in Poughkeepsie but I went to the Reformed Church of Shawangunk, so I always went with grandma on church days. I moved out and I went traveling for a long time; I was out in Arizona for a bit, but I recently moved back here to make sure that she finished her 100 years of life happily,” he said. “She was the reason to come home and the reason we all got together, we were always over at grandma’s house for a holiday.”

Beverly has always looked up to her mother as a strong role model, whether she lent a hand to someone in need, pushed her children to reach their full potential, or simply offered her century-old wisdom. Similar to Morgan, she vividly remembers helping her mom and sister prepare food for winter, shelling peas and peeling corn to be frozen and stored away.

“She’s always been my rock and support. She set high goals for herself and her kids to live up to, and she wasn’t a pushover parent. The only one who could get away with anything was Morgan,” Beverly said, chuckling. “She was always happy to support other people; she was quiet in the background for a lot of things and of people, and she was always ready to help.”

Besides raising her family, one of Schoonmaker’s bigger challenges was tending to her late daughter Sharon’s birth defect. She and Spencer made the tough decision to amputate her foot and fit her with an artificial limb, which was still a relatively new technology in her time.

“Sharon was born with a birth defect, she had one leg that was shorter than the other. So my mother and father decided that she would have her foot amputated and be fitted for an artificial limb which, because of the wars that had gone on, was a rather new concept of having,” Beverly said. “They fitted soldiers with artificial limbs when they came home from war, but not children. So Sharon was the first to be fitted with one as a child, and I think that was very courageous.”

For her 100th birthday, former State Senators William Larkin and John Bonacic presented a legislative resolution to Schoonmaker, detailing her journey and accomplishments over the century. Near the end of the resolution, Schoonmaker shared several of her favorite life lessons; she considers these to be the keys to living a long and healthy life. She encouraged everyone to be a friendly neighbor, keep busy with productive tasks, never complain and take things as they come, live without regrets, and always laugh.

“My grandmother is one of those stoic rocks; even if she’s having a hard time, she never shows it,” Morgan said. “She’s turning 109 and she’s not on any painkillers. I don’t know many 80-year-olds that aren’t on painkillers, so that’s just not who she is.”