A small woman climbs out of a small car, making up in energy what she might lack in size. She marches briskly down the street, the flaming color of her sweater echoed in her fire engine red lipstick and shoulder bag. Is this matriarch going to sit on a park bench with fellow octogenarians? Is she rushing to host one of her eight beloved grandchildren?  Not on your life - not if it is a weekday.

Instead, Lydia Granot skirts nails and timber to enter a construction site strewn with bricks and nails. She treads between aluminum beams and ceramic tiles to plant herself before a burly contractor double her size. Patiently, softly, firmly, professionally, she looks up into his face and explains in a bell-like voice what specifications he must meet and how his crew must perform in order to fulfill Granot’s commitment to build her latest house, remodel her latest apartment or expand her latest kitchen.

Gush Dan is dotted with buildings erected over the last generation bearing the imprint of Lydia Granot, architect. Granot’s motto is to conform each project to her clients’ tastes. Instead of a “Lydia Granot” style, Granot’s signature is that each finished space express the vision and serve the comfort of the person who will live in it.

Granot is more than a genteel builder of modern Israel. Her biography and eclectic personality make her a personal symbol: modesty, optimism, humor, sensitivity, artistry, energy, taste, kindness, culture, naiveté, delicacy, exuberance.

Lydia arrived in Israel in 1943 at the height of World War Two. But instead of the haggard refugee one would expect, there is a jaunty Lydia marching at the head of a band of homeless children, a cheerful mascot leading them into the Promised Land.

For four war-torn years, from the age of 10 until 14, she was separated from her parents. Escaping with her aunt's family from Poland to Russia, she was not allowed to cry when she saw a child next to her perish. Forced to continue on her own, she crisscrossed continents alone and in fear of her life at an age when normal children are just finishing primary school. For a year at age 11 she was incarcerated alone in a Russian prison.

 By a miracle Lydia reached the Iranian capital and there she was able to join a convoy of 716 other Jewish minors. Lydia's saga as one of the "Teheran children" lasted eight more months, traveling east to Karachi, then across the Indian Ocean by ship to Suez. Through the efforts of philanthropist Henrietta Szold they were allowed by the British authorities, as an exception, to enter Palestine. In the spring of 1943 Lydia was reunited with her parents whom she had not seen since 1939. She did not recognize them.

Lydia’s personal odyssey was incorporated into Dvorah Omer’s classic novel The Teheran Operation, and she has become the focus of international attention via a German documentary about her story and her visit to Germany as part of the commemoration of the Teheran children’s experience. Lydia donated the wartime diary she kept to Yad Vashem where any member of the public can now read it.

Once a house is finished, former clients don’t disappear - they metamorphose into friends. At her 80^th birthday party this winter hosted by an old friend/client at the villa Lydia had designed in Savyon, she led the disco dancing. That’s another talent Lydia has: making life look easy.

Lydia has been a volunteer ESRA Magazine distributor for 31 years in her home town of Kfar Shmaryahu. She does so, she says, as she is amazed at what ESRA does and believes that by distributing the magazine she is helping people to settle or live in Israel. During many years she also supported an organization devoted to helping to build playgrounds for underprivileged children. For who knows better than Lydia that childhood only comes once?