Arkansan becomes world’s oldest person
On the day Gertrude Weaver is said to have been born, the U.S. had just won a major victory in the Spanish-American War, and you could see a matinee show at the Los Angeles Theater downtown for 25 cents.
On Wednesday, nearly 1 17 years later, Weaver had her nails painted pink. Although the Arkansas native enjoys her regular manicures, this one was special: At 116, she’s now believed to be the oldest person in the world.
“We did a little bit extra today,” said Mary Bennett, who is married to Weaver’s grandson. “She looks so pretty.”
With the death Wednesday morning of 1 17-yearold Misao Okawa of Osaka, Japan, the world’s oldest living person, the title is expected to move now to Weaver and back to U.S. soil, where it will likely remain for a while. (The second- and third-oldest people in the world, both women, are Jeralean Talley, 1 1 5, of Michigan and Susannah Mushatt Jones, also 115, of New York.)
Th e daughter of Arka nsas sharecrop - pers, Weaver moved to Los Angeles in the 1950s and lived in California for years before returning to Arkansas in the 1970s, Bennett said. Today, she lives in a retirement home in Camden, Arkansas.
“She is just a sweet person, and she always says she has three keys to life: loving God, working hard, and loving everybody and treating ever yone the same,” Bennett said.
Up until last year, she enjoyed “wheelchair dances” at the senior home and still today is known to “call the Hogs” — a University of Arkansas tradition.
Robert D. Young, who tracks supercentenarians, or people over the age of 110, for the Gerentology Research Group, said he met Weaver last year when he flew to Arkansas to celebrate her birthday and present her with a plaque that recognized her as the oldest living American. She was, he says, “very sweet.”
Bennett says, every Sunday Weaver attends church services at the home with her son, Joe Weaver, the last surviving of her four children. He turns 94 on Tuesday.
Official records say Weaver was born July 4, 1898, but no one knows for sure exactly how old she is, Young says.
Birth records didn’t exist in Arkansas when Weaver was born, he says, and census records from 1900 say Weaver was born April 1898. But official Social Security records put her birthdate at July 4, 1898. Young says at that time, it was common for the Social Security agency to assign a person a birthdate if they couldn’t provide a birth certificate — Jan. 1, July 4 and Dec. 25 were popular choices.