By Anne W. Semmes
On March 30, 2022, Tove Elizabeth Mose, a Riverside resident and native of Copenhagen, Denmark, will turn 100 years. To celebrate her birthday the Greenwich Sentinel stopped by to ask her a few questions.
GS: What does your name Tove mean in Danish?
TM: It’s an old Viking name.
GS: How will you celebrate your 100th birthday?
TM: My two girls are coming, Elsebeth Timm and Birgitte Peschke. My neighbor is going to Europe because their daughter is studying in Czechoslovakia. My neighbor is Swedish, and her husband is from Norway.
GS: What do you attribute your longevity to?
TM: Because I like the flowers and the grass.
GS: How many knee, hip, or shoulder replacements have you had?
TM: In 2010 I couldn’t move, and that was my hip. In 2013 I had the other hip replaced.
GS: What do you do for exercise?
TM: This is my exercise. [She lifts up small weights] There is nothing wrong with my arms. But
I’m kind of lazy. I can walk from here to my bedroom and back again. After I retired from my job, I would go to the YWCA every week to swim. And I was doing gymnastics on the floor. Then I broke my hip.
GS: What are you most proud of in your life?
TM: I had my husband, Jorgen. He was funny, he was nice. When I was 13, 14, I come to meet my husband. And since we have World War Two you don’t see any nice men because everybody was fighting. So, every year my husband come to Copenhagen. I bicycle with him at 13-years old. I meet his family. So, every year he come and visit me and say you want to go to a movie. I say sure. It was over five years. My mother told me not to marry him, but I did. We were married 70 years. He died five years ago of dementia. I would never have moved here if not for my husband. He needed a job. So, he arrives to work for Victor Borge, the actor. He was playing funny on the piano. He had a farm in Southbury. So, my husband was a farmer there. My oldest daughter was 12 and the other was four. Then Victor Borge moved to Greenwich.
GS: How long have you lived in your Riverside house?
TM: We moved in in 1958.
GS: What decade in your life has meant the most?
TM: I loved my mother and I lived with her before I got married. I got my [medical technology] training in Copenhagen. And, so when my husband got fired, I went to Greenwich Hospital, and I got a job as a medical technologist and worked there for 25 years.
GS: What is your progeny? Grandkids?
TM: I have two grandkids but one of them died. It was very sad.
GS: What are you most concerned about?
TM: My father was divorced from my mother. But I didn’t know – I was a baby. So, my grandfather sent my mother to Switzerland for TB because there were not many sanitariums in Denmark. So, my father comes back from the Royal Danish Army, and they got divorced. My mother marries a very nice man. He was a lawyer and later on a commander in the Danish Navy. She was married to him for 10 years and got divorced. I never asked my mother why she divorced him. And then I see for myself, my husband sometimes was impossible. But I love my two girls, so no divorce for my children. So, we four stayed together.
GS: If you could tell the President of the United States one thing now what would it be?
TM: I’m not much for politics. They come they go.
GS: What’s your counsel for the younger generation?
TM: My two girls are really nice. The youngest, Elsebeth, is married to her husband Jonathan for 44 years. They met each other in college and are both artists. I say to her, ‘You are so lucky. You have one husband, and you love him.’ And they have a nice home in New Fairfield. My oldest daughter Birgitte lives in New Hampshire. She got married and got divorced after 19 years. I say to her why don’t you find another husband. ‘Oh no!’ she says. She is 72 now. And the other is 69.
GS What are some of your hobbies?
TM: When I retired, I played in the Bridge Club at my church, First Congregational, and was also in the Book Club.
GS: What is a favorite piece of music?
TM: “The Sound of Music.”
GS: What’s on your bedside reading table?
TM: I paint.
GS: Do you believe in life after death?
TM: No.
GS: If you had a magic wand what would you wish for?
TM: I want to live.
