Spock Would Be Proud
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm 51 years old.
I only tell you this because, when she was my age, Jeralean Talley was living in the year 1950.
And she continued to live, some 65 more years, until passing peacefully the other day in her home in Inkster.
Jeralean was 116 years, 25 days old when she slipped away, ending her two-month reign as the world's oldest living person.
I wonder what it would have been like to be my age now, in 1950.
Harry S. Truman was president. Television was still a relatively new thing and lots of folks didn't even own one. And if they did. it broadcast everything in beautiful, gorgeous, vivid...black and white.
The NHL had six teams. Major League Baseball had all of 16. The NFL was still finding its audience as teams were experimenting with something called the forward pass. The NBA was four years old.
The only phones we had were mounted on our kitchen walls. You had to actually read the hands of a clock or wristwatch to tell time. Shoes had laces, not Velcro.
If you wanted to know what was going on, you bought a newspaper. If you needed more, you bought a Late edition on the street.
Cars were as big as tanks and the only things that weren't metal were the seats and the dashboard.
If you wanted to know how to get where you were going, you bought a map.
You didn't send e-mails, you wrote letters. If you wanted to pay a bill, you licked a stamp.
We were just five years removed from the second World War and on our way into another conflict in Korea.
That's just when Jeralean Talley was 51.
She graduated from high school during World War I. When she was old enough to vote, she couldn't.
She saw the invention of the telephone, the airplane, radio, air conditioning, modern refrigeration and instant coffee.
For starters.
Jeralean Talley (1899-2015)
But Jeralean is gone now, and according to daughter Thelma Holloway, who's a youngster at age 77, her mother "was ready to go home and rest."
"She asked the Lord to take her peacefully, and he did," Holloway told the Detroit News.
According to the News story, the California-based Gerontology Research Group, which keeps track of the world’s oldest people, declared Talley in early April to be the oldest human on the planet.
The previous record-holder, Arkansas resident Gertrude Weaver, died April 6 at 116 years old, according to the group.
Mrs. Talley is succeeded as the world’s oldest person by New Yorker Susannah Mushatt Jones, who turns 116 on July 6.
Jeralean Talley moved to Detroit from Georgia in 1935, right smack in the middle of the Great Depression. Her husband, Alfred, has been gone since 1988 after 52 years of marriage to Jeralean.
Jeralean was an avid bowler, continuing to roll games until she was 104. Her last game rolled produced an astounding score of 200.
Despite the number of people around the world who have lived well past their 100th birthday, there continues to not be any succinct reason why they were able to eclipse normal life expectancy by such a wide margin.
They all had their "secrets" to longevity, and some of those secrets wouldn't necessarily lead you to believe that they would have anything to do with living past 50, let alone 100.
So maybe it's just a crapshoot.
Regardless, it won't be long before these centenarians no longer have 19th century dates on their birth certificates. To be born in 1899 and still be alive today is a marvel.
Jeralean Talley's longtime friend and fellow churchgoer, Christonna Campbell, spoke for so many of those who knew Mrs. Talley.
"We just thought she was going to live forever," Campbell said.
But didn't she, in a way?
I only tell you this because, when she was my age, Jeralean Talley was living in the year 1950.
And she continued to live, some 65 more years, until passing peacefully the other day in her home in Inkster.
Jeralean was 116 years, 25 days old when she slipped away, ending her two-month reign as the world's oldest living person.
I wonder what it would have been like to be my age now, in 1950.
Harry S. Truman was president. Television was still a relatively new thing and lots of folks didn't even own one. And if they did. it broadcast everything in beautiful, gorgeous, vivid...black and white.
The NHL had six teams. Major League Baseball had all of 16. The NFL was still finding its audience as teams were experimenting with something called the forward pass. The NBA was four years old.
The only phones we had were mounted on our kitchen walls. You had to actually read the hands of a clock or wristwatch to tell time. Shoes had laces, not Velcro.
If you wanted to know what was going on, you bought a newspaper. If you needed more, you bought a Late edition on the street.
Cars were as big as tanks and the only things that weren't metal were the seats and the dashboard.
If you wanted to know how to get where you were going, you bought a map.
You didn't send e-mails, you wrote letters. If you wanted to pay a bill, you licked a stamp.
We were just five years removed from the second World War and on our way into another conflict in Korea.
That's just when Jeralean Talley was 51.
She graduated from high school during World War I. When she was old enough to vote, she couldn't.
She saw the invention of the telephone, the airplane, radio, air conditioning, modern refrigeration and instant coffee.
For starters.
Jeralean Talley (1899-2015)
But Jeralean is gone now, and according to daughter Thelma Holloway, who's a youngster at age 77, her mother "was ready to go home and rest."
"She asked the Lord to take her peacefully, and he did," Holloway told the Detroit News.
According to the News story, the California-based Gerontology Research Group, which keeps track of the world’s oldest people, declared Talley in early April to be the oldest human on the planet.
The previous record-holder, Arkansas resident Gertrude Weaver, died April 6 at 116 years old, according to the group.
Mrs. Talley is succeeded as the world’s oldest person by New Yorker Susannah Mushatt Jones, who turns 116 on July 6.
Jeralean Talley moved to Detroit from Georgia in 1935, right smack in the middle of the Great Depression. Her husband, Alfred, has been gone since 1988 after 52 years of marriage to Jeralean.
Jeralean was an avid bowler, continuing to roll games until she was 104. Her last game rolled produced an astounding score of 200.
Despite the number of people around the world who have lived well past their 100th birthday, there continues to not be any succinct reason why they were able to eclipse normal life expectancy by such a wide margin.
They all had their "secrets" to longevity, and some of those secrets wouldn't necessarily lead you to believe that they would have anything to do with living past 50, let alone 100.
So maybe it's just a crapshoot.
Regardless, it won't be long before these centenarians no longer have 19th century dates on their birth certificates. To be born in 1899 and still be alive today is a marvel.
Jeralean Talley's longtime friend and fellow churchgoer, Christonna Campbell, spoke for so many of those who knew Mrs. Talley.
"We just thought she was going to live forever," Campbell said.
But didn't she, in a way?
Comments
Post a Comment
As you will...