‘I’m very robust’
102-year-old Cos Cob woman beats coronavirus
GREENWICH — Ruth Wilson of Cos Cob is a member of a club no one wants to join: She survived a serious bout with the coronavirus — at the age of 102.
“I’m very robust,” she joked in a recent telephone interview. A retired teacher, Wilson celebrated her 102nd birthday in March, around the time she got hit badly with the viral infection.
Though she has always had a hardy constitution, overcoming COVID-19 was not an easy matter for Wilson, who was hospitalized for two weeks at Greenwich Hospital this spring. A 10-week rehabilitation followed.
“What this virus does, it
takes all the energy out of you,” she recalled. “It left my legs like spaghetti. And I had to learn to walk all over again.”
It also took a toll on her dietary intake and nutrition. “Your appetite goes out the window with this virus,” she said.
Since returning to her home, Wilson has been taking regular walks around her apartment complex — and enjoying the feeling of fresh air after months of confinement indoors. “I walk every day, it’s really great. I don’t care if it’s cold or not. It’s just wonderful to get out,” Wilson said.
Since her recovery, Wilson said she has felt a deep sense of gratitude, for the nursing staff at Greenwich Hospital in particular — “that’s why I’m here, the nurses were so great” — as well as the many supporters and well-wishers who rallied to her side while she was ill.
“I had a lot of support, prayers, notes, it was really wonderful,” she said.
Wilson worked as a teacher at Cos Cob School, where she taught kindergarten and first grade for 28 years until retiring in 1979.
Well into her senior years, Wilson has been taking classes at Norwalk Community College, serving in leadership positions at the Diamond Hill United Methodist Church, volunteering with Meals on Wheels and taking a position on the Representative Town Meeting.
A lifelong learner, she is also an old hand at new media and technology, as well. The retired teacher is a regular user of social media, catches up on the news headlines every morning on her mobile device and checks in with fellow seniors at the Greenwich Senior Center on Zoom calls. “I don’t know where the time goes,” she says.
A gifted storyteller, Wilson has
Since her recovery, Wilson said she has felt a deep sense of gratitude, for the nursing staff at Greenwich Hospital in particular — “that’s why I’m here, the nurses were so great” — as well as the many supporters and well-wishers who rallied to her side while she was ill.
delighted audiences around town with her memories of Greenwich in the early part of the 20th century. Among the earliest recollections of her childhood is going to Island Beach: “Men would be all dressed up in a suit and a hat, and the women, just like they were going to church. And they would sit on the beach. ... And I had to wear a woolen suit, all buttoned up. It was hot!”
First Selectmen Fred Camillo, a former student of Wilson’s, called her “a Cos Cob treasure” when she celebrated her 100th birthday at the Cos Cob Firehouse.
Her recovery from COVD-19 has been a cause for celebration, in a grim year for public health and the loss of many elderly people to the pandemic around the region.
A friend and admirer, Bobbi Eggers, said Wilson’s recovery was a true bright spot.
“Imagine being 102 and getting through that,” she said, “She’s real fighter. Talk about tenacity. And she’s an icon of the Cos Cob community — very sweet, hometown stuff, like Norman Rockwell, and Greenwich is less and less about that.”
While the elderly are more vulnerable to the coronavirus, the odd and idiosyncratic nature of the pathogen makes it hard to predict who will face the worst outcomes. A 104-year-old woman in Trumbull recovered from COVID-19, and a 108-year-old New Jersey woman is believed to be the oldest COVID survivor in the U.S. Many other centenarians around the world have been cited as fending off the viral disease.
At the Greenwich Senior Center, administrator Laurette Helmrich said Wilson’s comeback was greeted with great enthusiasm. The 102-year-old educator is a wiz at trivia competitions, Helmrich noted, and she is always a valued addition to the virtual meet-ups that the senior center holds.
“An amazing story, surviving COVID,” Helmrich said of Wilson. “Besides all that, she’s a lovely person. She can teach people a thing or two. She shows you, you’re never too old to do anything, or to learn something new.”