Meeting with 116-year-old Edith Ceccarelli, the oldest person in America
Edith Ceccarelli, dressed in pearl earrings and a silk scarf, rested in an easy chair next to her birthday cake, decorated with the number 116.
What could otherwise have been a quiet birthday gathering on Sunday morning was instead a grand celebration of the oldest known person in America. Before a parade of a hundred vehicles decorated with balloons and streamers arrived outside the nursing home where Ceccarelli lives, I joined a group of reporters and photographers who sang to her and wished her a happy birthday.
Mayor Saprina Rodriguez of Willits, the small town in Mendocino County where Ceccarelli (formerly Recagno) lived most of her life, read a proclamation: “1908 was the year we got the Ford Model T. Theodore Roosevelt became president. And Edith Recagno was born: three timeless American classics.”
Read my article about Ceccarelli, including her advice for living that long.
Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group, a Los Angeles-based organization that studies supercentenarians (people who live to 110), told me that Ceccarelli was the 29th recorded person to live to 116. Her contemporaries, if alive, would be Lyndon. B. Johnson, Lucille Ball and Mother Teresa.
What advice does Young offer for living until you're 110? “No. 1: Be a woman.” Of the 45 Oldest People Now Living Worldwidehe noted, 43 are women.
What about things that are within one's control? “Stay physically active,” he said. “Run fast. Be a self-directed individual.”
Ceccarelli was lively and fit well into his 100s. She regularly walked through the city in a stylish outfit and danced in the senior center. At age 101, she wore a floppy, fringed hat and rode down Main Street in Willits in the back of a Porsche convertible as honorary grand marshal of the city's Fourth of July parade.
Young said that extremely long life generally comes from a combination of lucky genes (Ceccarelli's parents lived in their early 90s) and good habits, including staying social, having a daily routine and getting enough sleep. He met Ceccarelli last year when he took her blood for a biobank that researchers hope will yield more insights into why some people live very long lives.
Many of the world's oldest people live in a Mediterranean climate like California's; Young speculated that they may be easier on the body than places with harsher weather.
Ceccarelli, who lived her entire life in Northern California, is now considered the second-oldest person in the world; the eldest lives in Spain, but was born in San Francisco in 1907.
“I think it's time for California to shine; it's your day in the sun,” Young told me.
Ceccarelli now has progressive dementia, so she moves in and out of lucidity. But on the morning of the parade, she seemed happy to know we were all there to celebrate her. She tasted her carrot cake. She shared a hug with Evelyn Persico, 84, her second cousin by marriage and one of her closest living relatives.
“She's so beautiful – what happened to her wrinkles?” Persico, who said she has long considered Ceccarelli a mother figure, joked during the meeting. “I have more wrinkles than her!”
I've realized that I like writing about long-lived Californians:
And before you go: good news
Los Angeles is well-stocked with famous works of art and notable architecture, and TimeOut recently compiled a list of 21 museums in the city that it considers essential for residents and visitors. They are all free or offer free entry on some days.
These include the Huntington Library, the Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, whose pristine gardens are as much a delight as the art collection, and the 1921 Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Hollyhock House, perched on a hill in Barnsdall Park in Los Angeles. Feliz.