Ecuadorean woman, 116, is world's oldest person

I'm guessing she will not be getting rap CDs in her stocking, but I could be wrong. Wow. 116.

I've noticed after posting other "World's Oldest Person" articles, that older folks are always found.

Who knows where the next one will be located. :wink:

Have they looked in Tut's tomb lately?

Another version of this story, but with more details about her life.

With donkey milk and peace, Ecuadoran woman becomes oldest living person

at 15:32 on December 16, 2005, EST.
JEANNETH VALDIVIESO

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) - She was born in 1889, the same year as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler. She married the year the United States entered the First World War One and was widowed when Berlin split into East and West.

Soon after celebrating her 100th birthday, around the time the Berlin Wall fell, Maria Esther de Capovilla became bedridden and so weakened from a stomach ailment that a priest administered last rites. But she recovered, and now, 16 years later, she has become the oldest living person on Earth.

"We see the condition she is in, and what is admirable is not only that she reached this age, but that she got here in this shape, in very good health," Capovilla's daughter, Irma, told an Associated Press reporter at the upper middle-class home she shares with her daughter and son-in-law in this coastal city.

Seated on a sofa and waving a fan with a slender, steady hand in the tropical heat, Capovilla seemed bemused by the presence of strangers around her. Irma leaned close to her mother's ear, and speaking in a loud voice, told her she was now famous because she was the world's oldest person.

Capovilla simply shook her head and smiled.

Her calm disposition may be the secret to her longevity, her daughter said.

"She always had a very tranquil character," Irma said. "She does not get upset by anything. She takes things very calmly and she has been that way her whole life."

Born on Sept. 14, 1889, into a well-to-do family, Capovilla takes the title from 115-year-old American Elizabeth Bolden, Guinness World Records said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.

Capovilla was confirmed as the oldest living person on Dec. 9, after her family sent details of her birth and marriage certificates to the British-based publisher. Emiliano Mercado Del Toro of Puerto Rico retains the title as oldest man at 114.

The oldest living person whose age was authenticated, according to Guinness, was a woman named Jeanne Louise Calment, who lived to 122 years and 164 days. She was born in France on Feb. 21, 1875, and died at a nursing home in Arles, southern France, on Aug. 4, 1997.

Three of Capovilla's five children - Irma, 79, Hilda, 81, and son Anibal, 77 - are still alive, along with 10 of her 11 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren, the last of whom was born in February 2003.

In her youth, Capovilla liked to embroider, paint, play piano and dance the waltz at parties, the family said. She also visited a nearby plantation, where she would drink fresh milk from donkeys as well as cows.

She always ate three meals a day and never smoked or drank hard liquor. "Only a small cup of wine with lunch and nothing more," Irma said.

For the last 20 years, Capovilla has lived with elder daughter, Hilda, and son-in-law, Martin.

Fervently religious, Capovilla says her prayers without stumbling over the words, takes communion every Friday, and always joins the family for meals, enjoying lentils and chicken for lunch, which she eats unassisted with fork and knife in small bites, Irma said.


At night, she has coffee with hot milk and bread with cheese or jam, and says she can't do without something sweet: gelatin, ice cream or cake.

Capovilla still likes to watch television, and reads newspaper headlines, with some difficulty, but never with glasses. She has not been able to leave the house in nearly two years. A home assistant helps her to walk without the help of a cane or wheel chair.

In recent years, her family said, she has become less communicative as her hearing has worsened and her memory has started to fade. "Her memory is not bad. She remembers many things, but not everything. She is not 100 per cent lucid," said Irma.

Irma and Hilda showed Capovilla a portrait of their father, an Austrian sailor who came to Ecuador in 1910. After peering intently for a moment, Capovilla recognized the image. "It is Antonio Capovilla," she said.

"I was at the plantation Josefina and they brought a friend," she said, explaining in a soft voice how she was introduced to the man who would become her husband in 1917.