About Addie

Adaline Sorace was born in the Flint Hills of Chase County Kansas in 1915. The daughter of a typical farming family, her grandparents were among the earliest settlers of the territory; they came to Kansas in a covered wagon. She has near perfect memories of World War 1, the 1920s, the auction of prize cattle herds during the Depression, and the first dust storm during the Dust Bowl. Pioneer Bluffs in Matfield Green, Kansas, is a museum concentrating on one branch of her extended family.

Adaline left Chase County in 1935 to train as a nurse at one of the few nursing programs then offered by a university—the University of Kansas in Kansas City. There she has vivid memories of the classes given, her patients and what passed for medical treatments in the days before antibiotics. During World War 2 Adaline believes she gave the first dose of the newly created wonder drug, penicillin, at the Merchant Marine Hospital in San Francisco.

After the war she went to New York City where she married Alfred T. Sorace, an Italian American, and lived with his extended and colorful family. She has two children and four grandchildren.

Later in her life Adaline traveled to all 50 states and 6 continents. Today she lives in the Gramercy Park area of New York City. At 94 she does her own shopping and cooking.

Adaline with her daughter, Deborah