Sophie Porambo sits near a window that catches and delivers sunlight to the plants she lovingly cares for each day.

Only this afternoon, she’s surrounded by more plants - flowers to be exact. Roses, carnations, lilies, you name it - all sent by friends and family celebrating her 100th birthday.

“The time goes by so fast,” said Sophie, a second lieutenant in the United States Army Nurse Corps during World War II. “Who would even think I would be here today?”

Sophie was born in Lansford on March 19, 1922, and lived the majority of her life in Summit Hill.

She’s a guest at Heritage Hill Senior Community in Weatherly, where photos of her in her military uniform hang on walls alongside of some of her service accolades.

She is one of a dwindling number of Americans who served during World War II. According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, only about 240,000 of the 16 million were alive in 2021.

Sophie is the daughter of a coal miner, and the youngest of five children. After graduating from the former Summit Hill High School, she enrolled in the Allentown Nursing School.

Soon thereafter, she worked in private duty in the Lehigh Valley.

“The people were nice but it wasn’t for me,” Sophie recalled. Counting medications and performing other duties was mundane, she said.

“I thought, ‘I have to get out of here. I like it but it’s not my thing,’?” Sophie said.

The problem was that, as she explained with a dismissive hand gesture, “it was too quiet.”

So in April 1945, Sophie signed up for the U.S. Army. She learned basic triage and medical treatments in Fort Lee, Virginia, and was transferred to Fort Pickett, Virginia, where she learned she’d be sent to a dispensary in St. Lucia.

“I remember being on the plane and they would drop off one person on one island, then fly to another island and drop off another person,” she said.

She was one of the last on the airplane to make it to her assignment.

The St. Lucia site, she said, consisted of three buildings. She worked alongside doctors and Army Corps personnel who treated those wounded in battle. Soldiers were sent there for treatment and recovery before they were returned to the United States.

Sophie recalled some of the more serious injuries.

“I remember seeing some whose stomachs were open,” she remembered.

And it seemed as if she worked around the clock from her tropical location.

“I didn’t have time to ever put my feet in the water,” Sophie smiled.

And it was hot. Thunderstorms followed by heat and humidity could be expected most days.

“There was no air conditioning back then,” she smiled.

In a way, she said, St. Lucia’s rolling mountains reminded her of Jim Thorpe. She often thought about that, she said, but never found time to become homesick.

She was honorably discharged in August of 1946. She began dating Walter Porembo, whom she married in 1951.

Walter was also a World War II veteran, having served during the Battle of the Bulge. The couple raised their sons, Thomas and Robert, in Summit Hill, and Sophie worked at the former Coaldale State Hospital for 22 years.

Walter passed away in 2021 at the age of 100. Until his passing, they were the oldest surviving World War II couple in Pennsylvania.

Thomas Porambo recalled how his parents would take several long walks each day.

“I think that - and her coffee, kept her going,” Thomas joked.

Sophie’s brothers, the late John and Walter Porambo, also served during World War II.

Sophie only recently became a guest at Heritage Hill. She maintained her home, and frequently traveled to Allentown for shopping trips in her late 80s.

She was also an accomplished singer, and shared her voice with the Bach and Handel Chorale in Jim Thorpe and the choir at the former St. Stanislaus Roman Catholic Church in Summit Hill.

“She’s in general good health,” Thomas said.

She fell a few months ago and nearly broke her neck, but she recovered and is walking unassisted.

To celebrate her birthday, the family - including her four granddaughters - held a party at the Weatherly Country Inn.

“It is so nice there,” Sophie said.

Sophie enjoys baking, gardening, jigsaw puzzles.