Meeting 116-Year-Old Edith Ceccarelli, the Oldest Person in America

Edith Ceccarelli, done up in pearl earrings and a silk shawl, rested in an easy chair next to her birthday cake, adorned with the number 116.

What otherwise might have been a quiet birthday gathering on a 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 garlands began arriving outside the care 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) has lived most of her life, read a proclamation: “1908 was the year that gave us the Ford Model T. Theodore Roosevelt became president. And Edith Recagno was born — three timeless American classics.”

Read my article on Ceccarelli, including her advice for living such a long life.

Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group, an organization based in Los Angeles that studies supercentenarians (people who reach 110), told me that Ceccarelli was the 29th person on record to turn 116. Her contemporaries, if they were still alive, would be Lyndon B. Johnson, Lucille Ball and Mother Teresa.

What advice does Young offer for living into your 110s? “No. 1: Be a woman.” Of the 45 oldest people now alive worldwide, he pointed out, 43 are women.