102-Year-Old Potter Pursues Perfection in Great Neck

Great Neck, New York — At 102, George Strausman remains remarkably spry. ‘I’m feeling good,’ he told CBS News. He still works four days a week at his family’s construction business, but on his day off he pursues pottery. For the past ten years Strausman has taken a class through the Great Neck Free Union School District’s Community Education Program. ‘I’ve always worked with my hands,’ he says. ‘It’s an interesting thing to do. And it’s challenging to do well.’ His teacher, Rosalie Dornstein, admires his commitment: ‘And that’s wonderful that, at 102, he still wants to get better.’ Strausman describes creating as a compulsion of the spirit — an unending search for deeper meaning and greater beauty. His wife, Nancy, says he brings home a new piece nearly every week that he rejects, and hundreds of imperfect pots now fill wood cabinets and cardboard boxes, a testament to steady practice and stubborn optimism. ‘Maybe someday I’ll get good enough to be happy with it,’ Strausman admits. ‘I’m still not happy with what I do.’ When asked the secret to a long, happy life he offers a wry observation: you can’t leave Earth until you’re finished. And when he finally makes something he thinks is beautiful, he says, it will ‘be a great feeling.’