Dancing through the decades

On Aug. 14, Viola Chisholm will celebrate her 100th birthday in the same village she was born in.

“I was born in Rockville Centre, on North Forest,” she said. “It was right — do you know where the railroad trestle is now in Rockville Centre? Well, two blocks north of that.”

Chisholm, née Sagendorf, lived in Rockville Centre and Oceanside for her whole life, and watched the South Shore change over the decades. Her memories of the village in its earliest days are of a small, peaceful place coming into its own.

“Well, it was a nice town,” she said. “Quiet. Saturday night was the big event. The stores were open on Saturday night, the people would come down and shop and meet one another. It was a nice friendly town. Now it’s all business and nightclubs. Dancing.”

Dance is at the center of Chisholm’s story. A lifelong lover of music, she began taking dancing classes when she was six years old, and practiced ballet until she was 20. Even at 100, Chisholm is ready to keep on dancing — her next show at Sandel, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under,” premieres in October.

“All these years, she danced when she was younger, and then I can always remember her taking me to my first dance lesson,” said Allison Haunss, one of Chisholm’s six grandchildren. “Continually, week after week, dancing has always been a part of her life, and she’s inspired other people in our family to dance, too.”

“Then of course you go into business, and you get out of it,” Chisholm added. “But after I joined the Sandel Senior Center, they had a dance group, and I was always in that show. Different shows, we were in.”

She entered the business world in her twenties with Hayes Oldsmobile, once located on Merrick Road, where she served as secretary and office manager for over 35 years. Coming from a time when horse-and-carts clopped down brick roads delivering milk at three in the morning, it took her some time to get used to driving, but she said she had an excellent teacher in her older brother.

“He had a motor studio in Oceanside,” she said. “We’d go out of town to Oceanside where there was a big wide street, and he was very good with me, I think. And that’s how I learned, finally, and then I got my license.”