When Sophie Mistkowski of East Hampton turned 100 in 2017, she received congratulations from Pope Francis, State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Her family remembered her saying, “People were making too much of a fuss.”
Ms. Mistkowski died on Dec. 28 at the age of 106.
Asked after turning 100 what the best invention of the previous century had been, she answered, plumbing, according to her family.
Ms. Mistkowski was born in Water Mill on May 15, 1917, to Tefil Mistkowski and the former Lily Sadowski, both immigrants from Poland. She attended school in Southampton through eighth grade, and then left to work and help her family.
“She would often say, ‘It was a hard life, but a happy one,’ with friends and family helping one another,” her cousins said.
When she was 18, Ms. Mistkowski moved to Jamaica, Queens, to attend beauty school and after that worked in Valley Stream for many years. Eventually, she moved back home to the South Fork and opened her own business, the Water Mill Beauty Salon.
She retired in the late 1980s and moved with her brother Vincent Mistkowski to East Hampton, where she lived for the rest of her life. When friends and family stopped by to see her, “she would always greet you with a warm welcome, and you couldn’t leave without a cup of tea and cookies,” her family wrote.
“Sophie has enriched the lives of those around her through her joyous and sincere love for others, which only comes from the fullness of a life well lived.”
She is survived by her cousins, Joanne Schaefer and Karen Santacroce of East Hampton, Thomas Halliday of Eureka, Calif., Marie Schoemmell of West End, N.C., Camille Considine of Flanders, Barbara Nowaski of Stony Brook, and Nick Nowaski of Riverhead. A sister, Helen, and three brothers, Sigmond, John, and Vincent, died before her.
A funeral Mass was said on Jan. 5 at Our Lady of Poland Catholic Church in Southampton. She was buried at Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Cemetery, also in Southampton.
