Dorothy Kenopensky’s path to a long and healthy life has been: keep busy.

“I mow my grass. I tend to my gardens. I have my roundabouts with my kids,” said the Lisbon Falls widow.

She lives in the same house that she and her husband built in 1945 in an area that once was referred to as the Pine Grove Park section of Lisbon Falls.

“The road was dirt back then,” Kenopensky said. “It’s all third- and fourth-generation friends in this neighborhood. Over the years, things do change.”

She would know. She turned 87 in February.

Born in 1920, Kenopensky was raised in a “hard-shell Southern Baptist home” in South Carolina. Now, she said, when she heads south to visit, her friends say, “Gee, you sound just like those Yankees.”

Her husband, Michael, was born in Lisbon, in the house behind her compost pile and a small garage. “There is an old ’32 Ford in there,” she said. Kenopensky’s son has nudged her to sell the antique, but her husband had plans to restore the Ford before he died in 1972. The memories have kept her from parting with it. Michael Kenopensky served in the U.S. Army from 1938 to 1945 and was taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.

Kenopensky has a year left on her driver’s license. She has driven to 49 states and Prince Edward Island in Canada. She’s toying with the idea of buying a new car to replace her ’92 Chevy, but she is astounded by what new cars cost. “I paid $3,900 for that one, brand new!”

With that, Kenopensky walked down the path to her house. “Lot of things to look back on. Some good; some not so good,” she said. “A few odds and ends that I would not want to repeat.”