Ask Ruth Marx what it was like growing up in Hollywood during the Great Depression, coming of age in World War II or what it was like raising children during major social movements, and she’s bound to answer the plain, unglamorous truth.

“When you’re in it, you can’t stand aside and make a judgment,” Marx said. “Whatever had to be, it was.”

Marx celebrated her 100th birthday this past weekend on May 26, surrounded by family and friends.

She’s a humble woman with a big smile and warm presence. And despite her age, her unwavering voice and confidence around perfect strangers suggests that she has always been a sturdy, independent woman.

“As far as I know, I’m the only one in my family that has reached this pinnacle,” she said. “Who knows why one person reached this age and the others didn’t.”

There are two mantras she has lived by for a long time, explained her daughter Nicki Marx. As her daughter, she has heard them repeated since she was born. And they are at the root of Marx’s honesty.

““This too shall pass’ and ‘Count your blessings,’” said Nicki Marx. “She’s had some hard times but she always had an extraordinary amount of faith that guided her through.”

With these maxims in hand, Marx has developed an unusually sharp grasp of reality over the years that gives her that warm but sturdy way of approaching life.

“It’s important to be humble; to be accepting,” explained Marx. “It’s important to expect and anticipate good things, to think positive.

“It’s so important to know that good things are going to come. Don’t get busy feeling sorry for yourself.”

In her full century of life, nothing has held so true. Marx has among other things been a sister, wife, mother, salesperson, business partner, community organizer and, in her later years, a life partner to her Mack LeBlang.

“I fell in love at age 80,” Marx said. “In retrospect,

I had no love in my life except Mack.”

After 56 years of marriage, her late husband Donald Marx passed away. But not too long after, one of life’s gifts to her came in the shape of LeBlang.

A friend had invited Marx to a dinner party not long after her husband passed. But since she thought it was inappropriate to go out so soon after she was made a widow, her seat sat empty.

Seated next to the empty place at dinner was LeBlang. He asked, “Who’s supposed to be sitting here?” His host responded, “A lovely woman for you to meet.” Unbeknownst to neither Marx nor LeBlang, they were being set up.

It was beyond LeBlang’s comprehension to have a relationship at their age when he realized what their friend had in mind. LeBlang was 82, Marx 80 at the time.

He held on to her phone number for three long weeks.

“That’s a very long time for a person to wait,” Marx said.

“Later he would say, ‘He wasn’t so minded.’ He said, ‘minded.’ I had never heard the expression before.”

But he did eventually call. They made dinner reservations and had a drink. It didn’t take too long after that for them to fall deep in love, at 80.

Although they continued to have their own apartments, they lived just a few doors away from each other and spent his last 14 years together.

“He was a real gentleman, of the old school,” Marx said, smiling big. “The kind that don’t exist anymore.”

LeBlang passed away six years ago at 96. And he is not the only one Marx has lost. Many friends and family have come and gone over the years.

“I’m the last one; the tattered remnant,” she jokes.

But she’s anything but tattered.

“My strength is in my attitude,” she explained. “It’s all part of a big pattern that you can either accept or reject. Think about unhappy I would be if I looked back negatively on everyone I’ve lost.”

But her advanced age is not quite slowing her down either. She still regularly presents book review programs at the Waterfront Park Senior Center. It’s something she picked up while living in Palm Springs, when a group of her friends started a Brandeis University study group. She’s been doing the reviews for more than 35 years now for nonprofit groups, and it’s one of the many things she did as a community organizer in her younger years.

She also explains that the best thing about getting old is her family. She moved up to Bainbridge this past winter from Coronado, Calif. where she and Mack lived.