Margaret Weis Strauss has always been good with numbers. At 17, she was making $13 a week at Joseph Horne Co. department store as a comptometer operator, using the first mechanical adding machine.

Yesterday, she counted her 102nd birthday at the Presbyterian Home in Oakmont, where she lives, manages the family finances and dabbles in investments.

Margaret Weiss Strauss

She was born on Jan. 21, 1906, the youngest of Joseph and Mary (Schoenberger) Weis' four surviving children (four others died young). Her family lived in Mount Troy and her parents, both German immigrants, ran Jos. Weis Cash & Carry Grocery on Madison Avenue in the North Side. The nuns at St. Aloysius Grade School taught her and her siblings in German until World War I, when only English was allowed. She finished eighth grade at St. Boniface.

She worked first at Spears Furniture Store, then Horne's, then Donahoe's grocery and cafeteria on Fifth Avenue and, finally, her parents' grocery. There, she met Joseph Strauss, whose mother owned a confectionery store farther down Madison. Egged on by the firemen at the nearby station, he would stop by Weis often to buy eggs for his mother.

When their courtship began, her father would let Mr. Strauss know it was time to leave by dropping his shoes loudly on the floor upstairs. They were married on May 25, 1927, at St. Aloysius Church.

The couple opened Strauss' Market, a butcher shop, on Madison Avenue in 1929. Under the weight of the Great Depression -- and a generous credit policy -- the business folded in 1938. By that time, they had seven children, all born at home with the aid of a doctor and a whiff of ether (for when the pain was most intense). Their children are Dolores Kelly of Penn Hills, Albert Strauss of Oakmont, Louis Strauss of California, Agnes Weir of Ford City, Joseph Strauss of Penn Hills, Mary Buchleitner of West Mifflin and the late Richard Strauss.

When the children were older, Mrs. Strauss became a comptometer operator again for Bailey's Systems, a temporary agency. She also worked at Meadowgold Dairy and A&P, where she retired in the late 1940s.

After World War II (when Mr. Strauss was an air raid warden), they moved to Penn Hills, Verona, then Oakmont. They were living at Seneca Hills Village in 1996, when Mr. Strauss died.

Mrs. Strauss has always enjoyed crocheting, tatting, French knots and sewing, although she had to give up her sewing machine at age 100, when she moved to the Presbyterian Home. She still enjoys reading and doing crossword and jigsaw puzzles. Mrs. Strauss has 32 grandchildren, 52 great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren.