When Henie Feinberg came to America at the age of 10, "everyone was chewing," she says, "just chewing." This was a strange sight to her, because where she came from people didn't chew gum.
Henie was born in 1913, in Metz, Alsace-Lorraine, a town on the Moselle River. Named Henriette at birth, she was the second of Cecelia and Heinrich Drolshagen's three children. Cecelia was French and Heinrich was German. Alsace-Lorraine, a border region between France and Germany, has changed nationality several times in its history. At the time of Henie's birth it belonged to Germany.
Henie remembers tagging along with her mother to fancy pastry shops in Metz, picking lilies-of-the-valley in the surrounding woods and taking the train along the Rhine River to visit her grandparents.
Heinrich was in the construction business; he helped build factories, doing such specialized jobs as waterproofing tanks and building chimneys. During World War I he served in the German army. When Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France following the war, the Drolshagens moved to Hamm, Germany, near Heinrich's birthplace. Five years old, Henie entered kindergarten at a Catholic primary school.
Growing up, Henie was close to her younger brother, Otto; there was also a sister, significantly older, that Henie didn't know as well.
Heinrich, too, had a brother, also in the construction business, who lived in Chicago. He persuaded Heinrich to move his family once again and join his business there. They immigrated in 1922 through Ellis Island.
"Moving to America was a blessing," says Henie. "There wasn't much food in Germany. My siblings and I had to share one egg, and once my father went as far as Holland to buy some horsemeat. Here you have everything."
Their American life began in Chicago, where Henie enrolled in public school and the Sheehy Dancing School as well. She attended dancing school nearly every day, studying mostly ballet but also tap and acrobatics.
Whenever her father worked on a construction project elsewhere for a year or more, the family moved with him. This meant that they lived in Alton, Ill.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Port Arthur, Texas, until Henie's mother said, "Enough!" and they settled for good in Chicago.
Henie graduated from high school in 1931, "by the skin of my teeth," she says. Her mother wanted her to attend finishing school in Europe, but instead she joined the Balaban and Katz dance troupe in Chicago. Under the stage name Henie Hagen, she performed in lavish Chicago theater productions and traveled with the dance troupe from Maine to New York City and other metropolises, to the Texas state fair, to Sheridan, Wyo., where she was "introduced to the cowboys."
After a glamorous, two-year career, she quit showbiz and took a job as a "coffee girl" in a diner, uniformed in a brown dress and brown hat. One day, as she refilled a customer's cup, he scrawled an invitation to dinner on a napkin and slipped it to her. She accepted.
His name was Frank Feinberg.
"He was tall and handsome," Henie recalls. Their first date was dinner and a movie, "Theodora Goes Wild," at the Tivoli Theater. They dated regularly for several years, till World War II broke out and Frank joined the Army.
They were married in 1941 at Camp Forrest, a military base near Tullahoma, Tenn.; then Frank left for Italy, where he served in combat for two years. Meanwhile, Henie worked as a hairdresser and, occasionally, a photographic model. The photographers shot in black and white, and to this day those are her favorite colors to wear.
When Frank returned home he became an executive at U.S. Paper Supply, a family business; he would work there his entire career. On Christmas Day, 1950, son Frank Jr.-nicknamed Corky-arrived, and the three of them moved to Homewood, a suburb of Chicago.
A TV life
One realm in which the world has changed for Henie is family life. "There are no more Ozzie and Harriets," she says, bemoaning the fact. She believes that life as depicted on the TV sitcom was real, because she lived it. "I helped my husband dress for work every morning and picked him up at the station every evening," she says. "It was wonderful."
Frank and Henie were married until 1960, when Frank died of a heart attack. He was only 50, and Corky only 10.
Until Corky entered high school, Henie was a full-time mother. Then she sold real estate for a while, but eventually got a job at Marshall Field's department store in Park Forest, Ill., where she worked well into her 70s. "I sold draperies and fabrics on the second floor," she says. "It was a great place." She also taught knitting there. Both knitting and needlepoint were her lifelong hobbies, until macular degeneration ruined her eyesight.
On the runway
In 2003 Henie moved to Seattle to be closer to Corky and his wife, who have lived here for several years. She left behind many dear friends: Gwen, Ann, Anne, Lelo and Lola. Before she left, Lelo and Lola threw her a 90th-birthday party.
Henie now resides at Queen Anne Manor, where she lives with her dog, Sadie, a cocker spaniel-Pekinese mix. Henie walks Sadie every day. She loves dogs in general and has loved several in particular. Stuffed toy dogs are displayed around her room, as well as framed photos of past canine pets.
In October, Henie was in the spotlight again, as the senior model in Macy's "Better With Time" fashion show. In the semifinals in August she was number 121 of 137 entrants. That number was whittled down first to 52, then 15, and Henie made every cut.
She modeled two outfits, one casual and one more formal. Both times she walked down the runway without her usual cane, on the arm of a young man, and both times she received a standing ovation.
Why has she lived so long?, she herself wonders. "I take vitamins and avoid foods with preservatives," she says. "Other than that, I'm mystified.
"We get old whether we want to or not," she continues. Perhaps her acceptance of that fact has something to do with her longevity.
Teru Lundsten is a freelance writer living in Queen Anne; writer her at rtjameson@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
