Flossie Page, one of the oldest Americans on record, is dead at the age of 112.
Page, who lived on a farm in Kansas since 1950, died on Wednesday of pneumonia at a local hospital.
The Gerontology Research Group, which keeps a global database on people living past 100, said she was the sixth-oldest person in the United States and 11th-oldest in the world. She was the oldest on record in Kansas.
”Did Grandma look her age?” asked Becky Humig, Page’s youngest granddaughter who lived with her at the farm the past two years. ”We’ve never seen anybody that old. We thought she looked pretty good.”
Humig said her grandmother had been hospitalised only about a week. It had become hard for Page to get around in recent years, and she had only reluctantly given up driving and cutting the lawn after she turned 90.
The former Flossie Elizabeth Bishop was born on June 12 1893 on her parents’ homestead near the southern Kansas town of Haven. As a young woman, she taught at a one-room school about 130km west of her birthplace.
After the US entered World War I in 1917, she went to Washington, working as a stenographer in the War Risk and Insurance Department. After the war, she worked in the Treasury Department before returning to Wichita to work for the Internal Revenue Service, and she later married.
She outlived her husband, who died in 1926, and their only child, who died in 1993, but is survived by grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Page documented her life in journals. One entry from January 6 1918 reads: ”Spanish influenza has been raging all over the world, nearly. … For most of October, the churches, schools, theatres and all public meetings were closed. In Washington, some days as high as 98 people would die.”
In her later years, she awoke early and read her Bible before tending to her chores. One of those tasks was hand-washing her own clothes. She didn’t believe in washers or dryers.
Though she enjoyed strong coffee, she abstained from liquor and soda, and didn’t smoke or curse. She also took no prescribed medication.
Humig said Page lived by herself until she was 108 — one year after breaking her hip while cleaning windows and undergoing hip-replacement surgery.
”Grandma attributed her longevity to living a moral life,” Humig said. ”She never wanted to inconvenience anyone.” — Sapa-AP