Posted on 04/19/2008 11:05:08 PM PDT by Deo volente
Edna Parker was alert and eager to party on Friday morning as family, friends, dignitaries and their representatives gathered at Heritage House Convalescent Center to honor Shelbyville's own certified oldest person in the world as she turns 115 years old on Sunday.
Shelbyville Mayor Scott Furgeson announced at the party that the city has ordered signs that will promote Shelbyville as the "Home of Edna Parker, the world's oldest person."
"It is a great honor to have Edna and her great family in Shelbyville," Furgeson said.
Dressed in a new blue and white polka dot dress with a crisp, white collar and sporting her trademark white pearls, Edna seemed proud of her freshly washed and curled snow-white hair and brightly painted red fingernails. As numerous people complimented Edna on her vivid appearance, she simply smiled and said "thank you."
(Excerpt) Read more at shelbynews.com ...
Back in the early 70’s I had the opportunity to spend some time with a centarian. He was quite lucid and had all his faculties. He was born in the 1870’s and could tell some really neat stories. He seemed to have all the time in the world and I could sit and listen to him for hours.
It’d be pretty cool if that eighteen year old teaching student had her degree handed to her by Edna in 2011.
Only four years younger than Schicklgruber!
Edna. Beware all 114 year olds with a blown up paper bag.
I remember when Rush Limbaugh interviewed his grandpa, Rush Limbaugh, Sr., on the occasion of his 100th. He was like the guy you describe. He was still a practicing attorney at the time of his death at 104.
I am happy this journey is ending among friends, love and laughter.
Edna almost froze to death when she was 100! An amazing story.
EXCERPT:
A widow since her husband, Earl, died in 1938 of a heart attack, Parker lived alone in their farmhouse until age 100, when she moved into her son Clifford’s home. She cheated death a few months later.
One winter night, Clifford and his wife returned home from a high school basketball game to find her missing. Don, their son, says he discovered his grandmother in the snowy darkness near the farm’s apple orchard. He scooped up her rigid body and rushed back to the house.
“She was stiff as a 2-by-4. We really thought that was the end of her,” he said.
But Parker recovered fully, suffering only frostbitten fingertips.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89771009
(Another article I read goes into more detail on the paramedics arriving and Edna being rushed to the hospital. I’ll try to find it in the morning and post it.)
Congratulations Edna! I thought shelbyville was the neighboring town in the simpson’s cartoon.
Happy birthday to Mrs. Parker.
Reminds me of my dear sweet Grandmother who passed away in August 1999—at the time she was 100 Years old!
She doesn’t look a day over 105!
My wifes paternal Grandmother made it to 102. On her 100th she got a Birthday Card from (cough) ‘president’ Clinton - we threw it away after she died.
That is awesome. Hope that she has a happy birthday!
I want to know how these people live to be that old in a country that consistantly poisons its water and food with chemical fertilizers, poisons the air with industrial waste materials and automobile exhaust. We have some of the nastiest, most unhealthy diets of anywhere on the face of the Earth yet we still live to be old coots. Amazing!
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