South Lake Tahoe woman still walks daily as she turns 100-years-old

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - A special milestone is being celebrated in South Lake Tahoe this week - the 100th birthday of a South Lake Tahoe women.

In the year 1921, New York Yankee Babe Ruth hits his 138th home run as the team made their first World Series appearance, Coco Chanel introduces "Chanel No. 5". Boeing obtains orders for aircraft and abandons furniture-making, Albert Einstein receives the Nobel Prize in Physics, Woodrow Wilson (until March 4) and Warren G. Harding (from March 4) were president, and technology made advancements towards what would be the first television. Charles Bronson, Nancy Reagan, and John Glenn were born.

Also born was South Lake Tahoe resident Terry Kunibe on October 7.

Teruyo Kimura Kunibe was delivered by a mid-wife in the town of Perkins which is now inside the City of Sacramento.

Teruyo, known as Terry by her friends, is celebrating her 100th birthday in Sacramento with family and friends. In attendance will be her sister who is 102-years-old. As was her special meal last year for her 99th birthday, dinner will be one of her favorites - lobster tail.

The spry and energetic woman walks around her "State Street" neighborhood daily with one of her daughters who share in her care though Terry lives alone. She used to enjoy going to the Senior Center for exercise classes but due to COVID, the center is closed.

Terry is now a COVID-survivor, having contracted the coronavirus as it made its way through her family. This happened right before the mandatory evacuations due to the Caldor Fire. Living in South Lake Tahoe for 66 years left a lot of treasured photos to pack up for evacuation, a week she spent with her sister and family in Sacramento.

She has four children, ten grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. Many of the three other generations live in the South Lake Tahoe area so there are always family members in and out of her home.

Being Japanese, Terry's family was sent to the Tule Lake Internment Camp in WWII, just after she had graduated from community college. Tule Lake was the largest of the ten War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps. From there, they separated the citizens and she and her sister went to the camp at Topaz, Utah. As the war drew to a close the government started to release the encamped Japanese-Americans, but they didn't send them back to the West Coast which was still an exclusion zone. Terry ended up in Cleveland where she stayed for 18 months before heading back home to Sacramento.

Once there, she and her brother helped their parents purchase a fourplex for $5,500 from money they had saved.

It was in Sacramento where Terry met Tsutomu "Ben" after being introduced by a family friend from Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, their parents' native area. They married on June 15, 1947. Ben passed in 2011 after 63 years of marriage.

When asked what she attributes to living to 100, Terry said it was the fact she didn't drink or smoke. Terry said she does what she thinks she should for her health, and reading preventative health books. She also cooked her own meals over the years and enjoys eating more vegetables than meat, the same type of diet the Japanese have.

Besides the special meal of lobster, Terry enjoys sashimi and other Asian foods, as well as dessert (which she sometimes enjoys first!).

Terry still enjoys gardening but, as her daughter Charlene says, her idea of gardening now is pointing to family members where she wants things planted.

The centenarian is a charter member of the Soroptimist International of Tahoe Sierra club. The parent organization is also turning 100 this year, having formed in Oakland, California on October 3, 1921.

Happy Birthday Terry!