Posted on 03/08/2010 8:40:33 AM PST by cajuncow
WESTMORELAND, N.H. (Associated Press) -- Mary Josephine Ray, the New Hampshire woman who was certified as the oldest person living in the United States, has died at age 114 years, 294 days.
She died Sunday at a nursing home in Westmoreland but was active until about two weeks before her death, her granddaughter Katherine Ray said.
"She just enjoyed life. She never thought of dying at all," Katherine Ray said. "She was planning for her birthday party."
(Excerpt) Read more at ww2.cox.com ...
41,904 days. I hope she made the best of them!! RIP
Everybody moves up a notch.
Good lord, this woman has been drawing social security for 49 years!!! No wonder we’re going broke!! /S/
WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO WITHOUT AN OLDEST PERSON?
I was wondering how old our oldest U.S. citizen was. We just said our goodbyes to a family friend last week who was 109. She had the same life-loving attitude and was also in her own home until very recently.
What did she die of?
Her son-in-0law can at last breathe easily!
Who gets her serving of jello tonight? Who?!!
Everybody moves closer to death, too.
It’s a crown that no one wears too long.
Old age?
It’s an obvious thing, but I always get reflective, on how history passes.
When my parents were young, they could remember parade of Civil War veterans. What a trove of knowledge they must have had - not just facts, but just watching history like that.
When I was young, almost every older person I knew remembered seeing the first cars. They were all born in the 1800’s, and they all were WWII vets. The WWII vets are disappearing now, and the thought that the people that fought that great war, are gone- that seems almost strange to me.
This woman was born in 1895. Very soon now, there will be no one alive who was born in the 1800’s. Think of the memories she must have had - as a young adult, she probably worried about all the young men off fighting WWI, and had friends there. She probably had read all the newspapers keeping up with the battles, and remembers the first cars. When she listened to music on the victrola, it was probably semi classical stuff like “Whispering Hope”.
As a kid she probably remembered the first motion pictures coming in - flickery things in the 1910s when the great silent comedians were big. In 1918 during the great flu she was 23, old enough to perhaps worry about a child.
It’s always intrigued me how people just a few years apart have such different frames of reference - I remember the 50s fondly, and romper room and leave it to beaver and mothers that didn’t work, the chock full of nuts commercials and wearing dresses and gloves and hats and the Beatles. My siblings, who are younger, are lib and remember going to school in pants and watching Green Acres and listening to the Sly and the Family Stone.
It’s the way of course, of life, but when these participants of history are gone, it’s like a huge blank space opens.
This summer I am making a special trip to track down my oldest family members and record them.
They have memories of the twenties. One of them told me her first memories were of the Lindberg baby scare.
was certified as the oldest person
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She likely had a state **certified** birth certificate to prove it.
When my parents were young, they could remember parade of Civil War veterans.
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My dad died on his birthday last March. He was 43% as old as this nation.
Obama gave her a pill......
My granddaughter’s great-great grandmother on her mother’s side will be turning 104 in a couple of weeks. She’s like the energizer bunny, she keeps on going, and going, and going.....
It seems like everyone who becomes “the world’s oldest person” or the country’s “oldest person” dies within months of receiving that designation. It happens too often to just be a coincidence. I think an investigation is in order.
Must be all the fattening food down here but it seems the oldest people live up north.
Wait a second, I’m confused.
Which one has assumed the mantle?
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