USA: 100 Years of Staying Put

NEW YORK, NY / The New York Times / New York Region / April 29, 2012

Damon Winter/The New York Times

CONSTANCY Lillian Jacobs, now 102, moved to East 84th Street at 2. Her parents ran a candy store, right, in the building where they lived. Bottom, Ms. Jacobs's signature on a library ledger from 1916

By Benjamin Weiser and Noah Rosenberg

WHEN Lillian Jacobs was 2, in 1911 or ’12, her family moved from the Lower East Side into a tenement building on East 84th Street, just off York Avenue, then known as Avenue A. Her parents ran a candy store on the building’s ground floor, catering to the newly arrived immigrants from Germany, Hungary, Austria and Ireland.

People came and went over the years; apartment houses were built and tradesmen’s shops disappeared, along with the family candy store. But the character of the area, and specifically this part of East 84th Street, has largely remained the same. The brownstones, built at the turn of the 20th century and flanked by trees planted in more recent years, have stayed true to the block.

So has Ms. Jacobs.

Since arriving on East 84th Street, Ms. Jacobs, who is now 102, has moved to four different addresses, but always stayed on the street; her five homes have all been within 1,200 feet of one another.

“I don’t know why,” she said last fall in her sunlit apartment on the 17th floor of a building near First Avenue, where she and her husband, George, moved two decades ago. “But it seemed to be destined that I stay on East 84th.”

Ms. Jacobs is already a demographic rarity: she was one of 2,126 city residents 100 and over recorded in the 2010 census. But even though very few New Yorkers can claim a century spent in essentially one place, the notion of maintaining roots on a street is not entirely uncommon, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College sociologist.

A decade ago, Professor Beveridge recalled, one of his students interviewed a man of about 100 who had lived his entire life in the same house in Richmond Hill, Queens.

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© 2012 The New York Times Company
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Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights. 
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

CHINA: Huang Magan, 107, is one of this county's 81 centenarians

SHANGHAI, China / Shanghai Daily / Life / April 28, 2012

Six of 500 residents in this Longevity Town are centenarians

Huang Magan, 107, works on a loom at her home in Bama County in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region yesterday. The county, known worldwide as a longevity town, has 81 centenarians. This number includes six in Huang's village of about 500 residents. Her husband died in 1999 at the age of 96. Huang only gave up farm labor several years ago when her children talked her out of it fearing she would have an accident. But she is still active in embroidery and loom work and household chores such as washing clothes. Her home is also popular with tourists who she greets almost every day. Corn porridge is a main part of her diet.


Copyright © 2001-2012 Shanghai Daily Publishing House

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Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights. 
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

USA: Leila Denmark, 114, was world's oldest practicing physician upon retiring at 103

CHICAGO, Illinois / Chicago Sun-Times / Obituaries / April 4, 2012


By Jeff Martin


ATLANTA, Georgia - Dr. Leila Denmark, the world’s oldest practicing physician when she retired at age 103, died Sunday in Athens, Ga., her family members said. She was 114.

In this 2008 photo, Dr. Leila Denmark celebrates
her 110th birthday with her great-granddaughter,
one-month-old Grace Irene Brooks, in Georgia.
(AP Photo/Athens Banner Herald, Trevor Frey

Dr. Denmark became the first resident physician at Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children in Atlanta when it opened in 1928, said her grandson, Steven Hutcherson of Atlanta. She also admitted the first patient at the hospital, now part of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

She loved helping children, and it showed in the way she would turn to the next family waiting to see her, Hutcherson said.

“She would say, ‘Who is the next little angel?,” he said.

“She never referred to practicing medicine as work"

Dr. Denmark began her pediatrics practice in her home in Atlanta in 1931 and continued until her retirement in 2001. That year, she earned the distinction of being the world’s oldest practicing physician, said Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records. She was also the world’s fourth-oldest living person when she died, Young said. Throughout her career, she always kept her office in or near her home, where children and their parents would show up at all hours in need of care, family members said.

“The kids would come in and she would spend as much time as she needed with the parents to help fix that baby or that child,” Hutcherson said. “What she would do is figure out how to help them stay well.”

“She absolutely loved practicing medicine more than anything else in the world,” said another grandson, Dr. James Hutcherson of Evergreen, Colo. “She never referred to practicing medicine as work.” AP

© Copyright 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC
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Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights. 
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

USA: Great-great grandmother, 101, breaks paragliding record

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah / Reuters / Oddly Enough / March 22, 2012

By James Nelson

Photo courtesy: newsmakerstoday.com

A great-great grandmother in America was declared the oldest woman to paraglide tandem on Tuesday after taking to the air to celebrate her 101st birthday.

In confirming the feat, Guinness World Records said Mary Allen Hardison's historic flight near Salt Lake City on September 1 last year was "pushing record breaking to new heights."

Hardison, of Ogden, Utah, said she decided to go paragliding after her 75-year-old son Allen took up the sport.

"Just because you are old doesn't mean you have to sit on your duff all day," Hardison told Reuters.

Hardison's flight was cheered on by her great-grandchildren, who have witnessed other such birthday adventures: On her 90th birthday, Hardison rode all the adult rides at Disneyland, and for her next she plans test out a mountain slide in Utah.

She invited other centenarians to break her new record.

"I heard of one fellow that hadn't walked for quite a while and he decided when he heard about me he would walk again. So he got up and started walking again," she said.

"He said if she can do that, I can do this. If I can inspire some of the older people to get up and do something it's well worth it."

(Editing by Mary Slosson, Cynthia Johnston and David Brunnstrom)

Thomson Reuters

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Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights. 
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.