DAYS AFTER BECOMING the world’s oldest person, American woman Gertrude Weaver has died at the age of 116.
Weaver died of complications from pneumonia, according to reports.
She passed away at the Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Center in the southern state of Arkansas.
Weaver was pronounced the world’s oldest person on April 1 after the death of 117-year-old Misao Okawa in Japan.
She would have turned 117 on Independence Day, 4 July.
She was well aware of her unique status the Center told the Washington Post.
“She knew that she was the oldest person in the world, and she enjoyed that distinction greatly,” Kathy Langley, administrator of the Center, told the Post.
She enjoyed every phone call, every letter, every comment. Everything was read to her.
Weaver was born in 1898, the youngest of six children, and was the daughter of sharecroppers.
She once told an Arkansas newspaper that her longevity was due among other things to ‘treating everybody good’ the Post said.
She had four children and is survived by a son who turns 94 next Tuesday.
She is now succeeded as world’s oldest woman by fellow American 115-year-old Jeralean Talley of Inkster, Michigan.
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