A 114-year-old woman, considered the oldest person in Texas, has died at a Dallas retirement home.
Arbella Perkins Ewings celebrated her birthday on March 13 with a proclamation from mayor Tom Leppert and speeches by friends and family. She blew out all 114 candles on her birthday cake, but during the party, she warned those attending that she would not be around much longer.
Ewings died on Saturday at Grace Presbyterian Village, according to a spokesperson for Evergreen Funeral Home.
“She was telling everyone, ‘It’s time to meet my maker,'” Sabrina Porter, the retirement home’s executive director, told the Dallas Morning News. “It was a blessing that she went so peacefully.”
At the time of her death, Ewings was the oldest person in Texas, the second-oldest American and the third-oldest person in the world, according to the Gerontology Research Group, a California group that tracks the world’s oldest people.
By March 1, the organisation had validated 81 “supercentenarians” who were 110 years or older. The oldest, Edna Parker of Indiana, will turn 115 in April, and the second-oldest, Maria de Jesus of Portugal, turned 114 last September.
Ewings was born on March 13 1894, the fourth-oldest of 12 children whose great-grandparents had been slaves in Mississippi. She married Frank Ewings in 1915, and they moved to south Dallas in 1936, where she worked as a housekeeper until the 1960s.
Frank Ewings died in 1977, and the couple’s only daughter, Claudia, died in 1970.
“She told me once that the secret to a long life is she spent six months minding her own business and six months leaving other people alone,” said Ruby Perkins Williams, a great-grandniece.
Ewings was proud of being able to care for herself and her 83-square-metre home well after she turned 100. She was forced to move into the retirement home after she fell and broke her hip at a family party to celebrate her 113th birthday.
Her only surviving sibling, Annie Lee Perkins, is 103. — Sapa-AP
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