God, milk and wine add up to 114
November 19, 2009
Andrew Chung
QUEBEC BUREAU
MONTREAL–Usually when she is asked how she has lived to be the second-oldest person in the world (second by a mere week), 114-year-old Mary Josephine Ray, a Canadian living in New Hampshire, talks about her healthy lifestyle and drinking milk.
On this day, she's a bit more circumspect. "Because," she declares, "God lets me live."
How long do you think you'll live? "I don't know how long," she answers. "That's up to God."
As one of a handful of supercentenarians, those over 110, worldwide, and as the oldest person in North America, Ray embodies the enduring human desire for long life.
The spotlight again shone on Ray this week with the news that the third-oldest person in the world, Olivia Patricia Thomas, died in a nursing home near Buffalo.
"If somebody said it years ago, that my grandmother was still going to be with us, I'd have said, `No way,'" 59-year-old granddaughter Katherine Ray says.
"And she's my grandmother who's that old. I'd never have imagined it."
Since Ray is all but deaf, Katherine facilitates the phone interview by writing the questions out on a portable white board.
Some questions elicit no answer, but the mother of two, grandmother of eight, great-grandmother of 14 and great-great grandmother of four is still very much with it.
"Her memory is sharp," Katherine says.
How old she'll get is anybody's guess. According to the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks extreme old age, there is only one older person on the planet.
Kama Chinen of Japan, was born on May 10, 1895. Ray was born on May 17.
Born to Robert Arsenault and Lydia Blanchard in Prince Edward Island, Ray moved with her family to Maine when she was 3 years old.
She had to be tough early on. It was probably because she had to help take care of younger siblings that she was never educated past Grade 3. Her father died when she was 8, her mother when she was 15. She was on her own.
She had to search for "any job she could get," Katherine says, until she met and married her husband Walter in the 1920s. By this time she'd lost track of all her siblings.
Her independence endured after Walter's death in 1967. She packed and moved to Florida, alone. At 80, she moved back up north at the wishes of her family.
She lived by herself up until age 100, when her son, Donald, and Katherine pleaded with her to move into a nursing home for safety's sake.
She resisted, but finally one day she asked Katherine, "Are there any men there?" Katherine said, "Yes."
Disappearing into her room, she came back wearing her best white wig, and announced, "I'm ready!"
Nowadays at the Maplewood Nursing Home in Westmoreland, N.H., she keeps to herself for the most part. She still loves to play cards and cribbage.
Her other love is the Boston Red Sox. On her 108th birthday, she was invited to help sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays.
She's still healthy. She takes a mild painkiller for a bit of arthritis, but that's it. She's never been in the hospital for anything more serious than a gall bladder removal.
Her son Donald, at 84, "has the heart of a 20-year-old," Katherine says.
Ray's legacy might be her good genes. A study last year concluded that children of centenarians tended to live longer and were much less likely to develop diabetes or suffer a heart attack.
Age researchers have suggested the very old have certain characteristics in common, such as being female, having a positive outlook on life and not being obese.
And perhaps a small glass of port or wine after supper? That's a Mary Jo Ray must.
Toronto Star
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