The year was 1918. Many Americans were tripping the light fantastic to the Fox Trot. The cost of a home was around $5,000, and a loaf of bread cost 10 cents. The year also marked the beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic.

On Nov. 11, the Allies and the Germans signed an armistice that signaled the end of World War I. A little more than two weeks later, Edith (nee Derrico) Flick was born in Bethlehem Nov. 28.

This year, Flick, who has lived in her apartment at Lutheran Manor since February 2011, will celebrate her 106th birthday in Bethlehem, the town she still calls home.

Family background

“Family is everything,” Flick said on a recent July afternoon in her cheery apartment, decorated with many family photos and mementos.

“I love being independent,” Flick, the oldest resident at Lutheran Manor, said. She’s slowed down a bit, but still does a lot.

Flick, one of 13 children, grew up in a large Italian family with seven brothers and four sisters, headed by father Biagio Derrico and mother Louisa (nee Cantelmi) Derrico, who emigrated from Italy to the United States in the early 1900s.

Flick was born after the baby, Aida (pronounced I-E-Da) had died when she was about a month old. Flick was also named Aida, but later in life, Americanized her name to Edith.

She grew up in a family big on Italian values.

“I had a beautiful childhood,” she said. “We never wanted for anything, never wanted for affection, we always had it. The older ones took care of the younger ones.”

Flick’s father was a shoemaker, draping leather over the form of a shoe and building the shoe from scratch. He’d work from home until 3 p.m., then go to work from 4 p.m. until midnight at Bethlehem Steel.

“My dad was always smiling,” Flick recalled with a smile of her own.

Early immigrants were motivated and worked hard, Flick said.

She said years ago people knocked on the door for food and her mother made sandwiches for them. “That’s why we had so much. She gave so much. We got so much back.”

James Henry Flick

Flick knew her husband, James Henry Flick, long before she even dated him, as he was best friends with her brother Jack.

“Jimmy was always around our house for years,” Flick said of her future husband. “Finally, he asked me out and took me to the movies at the Globe Theatre at Fourth and Wyandotte. That was it. I knew.”

They married June 8, 1946, after James had served in the Army in World War II. The couple had three children: Jim of Orlando, Fla., born in September 1947; Louise of Fountain Hill, born in October 1949; and Elsie of Walnutport, born in January 1952.

Flick is close to her children and loves spending time, too, with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

She has five grandchildren – Matthew, Brian, Ryan (who passed away in 2006), Daniel and Lauren – and six great-grandchildren – Estella, Amelia, Connor, Evan, Roman and Mia.

The Flicks raised their children while members of First United Church of Christ, Bethlehem, which has since dissolved. Flick was raised Roman Catholic but changed to her husband’s Protestant religion because she wanted family members to be all together.

Active life

Flick was always active in church, arranging the altar flowers each week at First United Church of Christ and volunteering at the soup kitchen.

After her husband, who had worked at Bethlehem Steel, passed away in 2006, Flick rejoined Holy Ghost Roman Catholic Church on the Southside, and is still a member there, attending Mass when she can.

Holy Ghost acknowledged Flick’s 100th birthday at a Mass, during which a state representative gave her a certificate. Though she appreciated what the church did, she said she’s not fond of being in the limelight. Lutheran Manor also gave her a luncheon for her centennial year.

A graduate of Bethlehem HS (now Liberty HS), Flick worked at Bethlehem Steel as an order estimator who worked with numbers. After their children had grown up, Flick worked at Millcrest Factory as a floor lady where she fixed any mistakes in sewing on women’s nighties and underwear.

After retiring, Flick volunteered at New Bethany Ministries at its food bank, and volunteered at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity’s clothing shop.

Life’s loves

Flick is a woman with a song in her heart – music has always been part of her life. Growing up she loved going to dances in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and dancing to the big band sounds of Jimmy Dorsey and Tommy Dorsey, though, she said definitively, “Harry James was the best!”

Flick loves opera, especially the late Italian operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who she saw perform four times in past years with her son Jim, twice at the Philadelphia Academy of Music and twice at the New York Metropolitan Opera.

“We met him once at the stage door at the Met and got his autograph,” Flick recalled with a smile.

She is also a fan of Italian tenor Andre Bocelli.

Flick doesn’t watch much television, but she does tune in to PBS, especially for shows that feature Pavarotti or Bocelli, and programs such as Great Performances Live from the Met. Jim keeps her up to date on programming and tells her when someone is on that she likes.

Flick also likes curling up in a chair and reading romance novels by Robyn Carr – and some cowboy stories, too. She loves growing plants and sometimes she’s successful, she said with a laugh.

She is fond of going to Red Lobster and The Olive Garden and loves the Vigilia – Feast of the Seven Fishes – a Christmas Eve tradition in Italian-American households that consists of a large dinner of at least seven seafood dishes.

She recalled one special Christmas Eve when she and her husband and children went to her parents’ home on Pawnee Street, where she grew up. “It was a half-double so filled with people you couldn’t move,” Flick said. The Protestants in the family would go to Christmas Eve services at church and then come to the house; the Catholics in the family would first go to the house then to Midnight Mass.

No bucket list

Flick is known for her excellent baking skills and for often giving away the fruits of her labors in the kitchen. Though she doesn’t really bake anymore, she does continue to make cream puffs for occasions such as family reunions.

“My daughter Elsie does most of the cooking and brings it to me, but I do get my own breakfast,” Flick said.

Flick loves animals, especially dogs.

“We always had dogs,” she said, noting her favorite was a black Labrador retriever named Hoss, after the character Eric “Hoss” Cartwright on the Western television series Bonanza.

Flick doesn’t have a bucket list, as there’s really nothing that she wants to do that she hasn’t done. She treasured taking her dad to Italy in 1970 when he was in his 80s – her only big trip out of the country.

“We took a tour of Italy and went to Naples, where he was born,” Flick said. “The people in Italy were so friendly when we were there.” Flick said her dad left his sister there when he immigrated to the United States, and the two were never in touch again. The home he grew up in was bombed out during World War II.

Flick took care of her dad and father-in-law after each had strokes that left them bedridden until they passed. She wanted to care for them, she said, because “that’s what family is about.”

Parties & reunions

Son Jim was visiting from Florida the day of our interview. He said family has always been important to his mother, and she has always been there for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Flick looks forward to big family picnics and reunions, such as the family reunion they had at Dimmick Park in Hellertown Aug. 4. Her brothers and sisters had stayed in the Lehigh Valley, so there are lots of cousins at the reunions.

“She’s the only one left of her generation,” Jim said, noting many of her siblings also led long lives, with one brother reaching the centennial mark. The cousins of his generation sometimes have mini-reunions, and his mother is always invited.

“She’s the last link to their parents,” Jim said. “She’s included in everything, all the family functions.”

Their family reunions – which draw more than 100 people – include the Derrico, Cantelmi and Calpey families. Jim explained the Calpeys are part of the Cantelmi family but Americanized their name. Flick’s mother, Louisa, was the baby of the Cantelmi family.

Flick is grateful for the “family of friends” she has at Lutheran Manor. She moved there after her husband’s death, opting to sell her home and live in an apartment. It’s the first time she’s lived alone, having gone from her parent’s home to making a home with her husband.

She likes going to any of the socials, such as a pig roast, at Lutheran Manor.

“They really have some nice social programs here, such as soup and sandwich night and bringing in entertainment,” Jim said.

And Flick plays cards each Wednesday with friends, their game of choice being “Maneuver.” She explained the game is seven card rummy played with four decks of cards – “so you ‘maneuver’ the decks.”

“I have a nice group of friends here,” Flick said. “It’s a nice place to be.”

Lutheran Manor is happy to have Flick living there, and as such the Annual Celebration of Edith will be marked Aug. 16 with a pizza party and entertainment.

Resident Ken Clifford said over a decade ago Flick asked if they could have a pizza party, so he has organized one every year for the past 12 years except during Covid.

Flick’s children – Jim, Louisa and Elsie – summed up what they believe is their mother’s secret to a long life: “She’s very positive, sees the best in people, and has always helped people. People responded by giving back to her,” they said. “And she’s always smiling, just like her dad.”