At the age of 89, June Salander became the oldest woman at the Rutland Jewish Center in Rutland, VT ever to become a bat mitzvah. Like most Jewish women who came of age before the 1950s, June Salander did not celebrate a bat mitzvah as a girl. Born in Poland in 1908, she immigrated to New York with her family in 1920 and later settled in Rutland, VT after marrying her husband Lew Salander. She worked in real estate and as a Hebrew school teacher. She was also a celebrated baker and had her recipes for challah and apple strudel featured in Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America. She died in 2010 at the age of 101.

See also: We Remember June Salander.

Photograph courtesy of the Rutland Jewish Center.