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World's oldest person dies in US at 115
Edna Parker, a former Indiana schoolteacher who was certified as the world's oldest person, died on Wednesday at a nursing home in Shelbyville, Indiana, US. She was 115.
- Agencies
- Published: 20:56 November 28, 2008
Indiana: Edna Parker, a former Indiana schoolteacher who was certified as the world's oldest person, died on Wednesday at a nursing home in Shelbyville, Indiana, US. She was 115.
The new holder of the world's-oldest title is Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who turned 115 on September 10.
Parker was born on April 20, 1893, in Morgan County, Indiana. She graduated from Franklin College in 1911 and taught in a two-room schoolhouse until she married Earl Parker, her childhood sweetheart and next-door neighbour.
As a farmer's wife, she rose at 4.00am to fix breakfast for the family and hired hands and to do her chores. She outlived her husband, who died in 1938, and their two sons. She never remarried. Her survivors include five grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 13 great-great-grandchildren.
Parker lived by herself on the family farm until she was 100. At that lofty age, she could still climb a ladder to fix a light, grandson Donald Parker said on Thursday. When her family learned she was still climbing ladders, they persuaded her to move in with relatives.
Meat and starch
She spent her last years at the Heritage House Convalescent Centre in Shelbyville, Indiana. A fellow resident of the centre was Sandy Allen, who Guinness World Records considered the world's tallest woman at 7-foot-7. Allen died in August at age 53.
Last year, Parker helped Guinness record another feat when she met another supercentenarian, then-113-year-old Bertha Fry of Muncie, Indiana.
The meeting took place at Parker's nursing home about two weeks after Parker's 114th birthday.
A Guinness representative on hand to witness the event said their combined age of 227 was "the highest aggregate age of two people meeting each other."
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels commended the two women, who both grew up on small Indiana farms, became schoolteachers and ate a lot of meat and starch over the course of their exceptionally long lives.
Parker especially enjoyed eggs, sausage, bacon and fried chicken. She retained a sense of humour, evident at her 114th birthday celebration when she remarked: "I probably knew George Washington."
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