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Assisted Living Pittsburgh
QUESTION: Sitting under a warm blanket in a favorite chair at midday,
Charlotte Benkner tolerates the shouted questions with a
small, pursed smile of bemusement.
How have you lived so long?
What are your favorite memories?
Has the world changed for the better or worse in your
lifetime?
She's undoubtedly heard them all before, but she crackles
patient replies. When you've got a certificate from Guinness
World Records calling you the oldest known person alive,
there's not much you haven't heard, and little more you're
looking to accomplish.
Living in and of itself has been a feat for the 114-year-old
Benkner, a childhood immigrant from Germany who was born
before Groucho Marx or Dwight Eisenhower.
The former housewife, who lived in Pittsburgh as a young
newlywed, has spent the past three years in an
assisted-living residence in North Lima, Ohio, just south of
Youngstown. She's known there for her calm nature, man-sized
appetite and devotion to her kid sister and roommate,
Matilda, 99.
Benkner's disdain for fuss, but accommodation of those who
insist upon it, has been especially evident since Nov. 13.
On that day, three days before her 114th birthday, the death
of Mitoyo Kawate in Japan turned Benkner from oldest
resident of Glenellen Senior Suites and Villas-Lakeside to
the titleholder of senior human on the planet.
The record requires an asterisk. No one knows for sure which
of us 7 billion living souls was born first, though it was
certainly someone from the 1880s, like Charlotte Benkner.
The gerontologists, demographers and other researchers who
study such things and assist Guinness have simply determined
there's no one older than Benkner with good documentation to
back it up, as she has.
Not that the crown means much to this particular longevity
champion.
Ron Schwane, Associated Press
Charlotte Benkner talks about her upcoming 114th birthday
with a group of students from Boardman Center Middle School
during a Nov. 14 news conference at her assisted-living
center in North Lima, Ohio.
Click photo for larger image.
"It's too much," she says of the attention. "What's the
difference whether I'm 50 years or 100?"
But Benkner's much more than 100, and that's the point. It's
no longer so special to be a centenarian. The 2000 census
estimated at least 50,000 of them in America, compared to
3,300 in 1960.
Supercentenarians -- those 110 or older -- are another
matter. While the 2000 census suggested there could be more
than 1,000, researchers believe that's a vastly inflated
number from people miscounting their age accidentally or
intentionally. The census makes no effort to verify ages.
The Gerontology Research Group, an all-volunteer
organization affiliated with the UCLA School of Medicine,
maintains a list of "validated" living supercentenarians
like Benkner. She's one of only 41 on the list worldwide,
including 16 Americans.
None are from Western Pennsylvania. A Hill District
resident, George Darden, died at the VA Medical Center in
Oakland on Oct. 14 with his obituary listing him as 111, but
the research group disputes the claim. Investigators found a
1930 census reference to him as 30 years old at the time,
which would have made him about 103 upon his death.
The group's list is frequently in flux because it seems only
about half of the people who make it to 110 survive to 111,
and only half of those then get to 112, and so forth.
The group acknowledges the list itself is an undercount. No
one from the world's most populous nations -- China and
India -- is named. That's partly from shorter life
expectancies in those nations, and partly from the group
lacking researchers in those and many Third World lands to
try to verify age claims.
The list of 36 women and five men is dominated by residents
of the United States, Japan and European nations, but
additional Americans and others who made it past 110 can't
prove it because 19th century record-keeping fell short of
today's standards almost everywhere.
In Benkner's case, the Gerontology Research Group's senior
claims investigator, Robert Young, of Atlanta, verified her
age from an 1889 birth certificate, 1890 baptismal
certificate and 1908 marriage license, among other records.
The 1910 census placed her and her husband, Karl, a civil
engineer for Carnegie Steel, in Pittsburgh's 18th Ward,
among the city's southern hilltop neighborhoods. She has no
recollection of that stop on her life's journey, having left
the city behind like many of the past century's
20-somethings.
The couple, who never had children, followed his job to
Youngstown, where they lived until Karl Benkner's death in
1967. She and her sister lived for three decades afterward
in Tucson, Ariz., before concerns about ability to care for
themselves returned them in 2000 to Ohio, to be near
Benkner's nephew and niece.
Matilda's daughter-in-law, Mary O'Hare, of Boardman,
schedules Benkner's appointments and helps handle her
interviews. The longevity champion can't see or hear well,
and questions need to be shouted. Her responses are clear,
clipped and sensible.
"Live a good, straight life -- that's all that's required,"
Benkner says. "I'm going to live just as long as the Lord
allows, and that's it."
One big question is how long she'll hold the title.
Typically, it changes every year, and she's actually the
third recordholder in the past month because of two deaths
in quick succession in Japan. The person recognized as the
oldest person ever to live, Jeanne Calment, of France, died
at 122 in 1997 after six straight years recognized by
Guinness.
Young, the researcher who visited Benkner at a birthday
party last Sunday, said she appears robust compared to some
of the other supercentenarians he's met.
Her physician of the past three years, Dr. Charles Edward
Wilkins, of Youngstown, said her sound mind, appetite and
mobility are big assets. Her organs all function, and her
only regular medication is for blood pressure.
"I have noticed no deterioration whatsoever," he said.
"She's holding her own very well -- a good plateau."
Studies of the centenarian population have grown in recent
years, but the number of supercentenarians has been too
small for extensive research. One common trait found among
most of those making it to 100 has been ability to handle
stress well throughout life.
Genetic factors are apparently more important than any
lifestyle habits, as many centenarians have parents and
other family members who lived to approach or reach that
status themselves.
Benkner's mother died six weeks shy of 100. Her father lived
to 92 and a brother to 98. Sister Mildred, known as
"Tillie," will become a centenarian on her next birthday.
She is currently in a rehabilitation center recovering from
a broken hip.
Dr. Stephen Coles, a UCLA stem cell researcher who is
executive director of the Gerontology Research Group, has
examined the background of the list's supercentenarians to
identify their shared habits. It's been unproductive.
"There's hardly anything these people have in common," Coles
said. "It's grasping at straws to try to put a story
together, like Sherlock Holmes, of anything these people do
in their lives to accomplish these records on the outer
limits of longevity. ... All of these people are so
extraordinary in longevity, but unextraordinary in every
other way."
Obese people do not make the list, but Frenchwoman Calment
was a smoker. Some others were heavy drinkers. Some both
drink and smoke, and end up outliving the physicians who
advise them to stop if they want to live a long and healthy
life.
Coles said several new studies of long-lived individuals
point to low cholesterol measurements, with genetics again
playing the key role. The genes that determine longevity
have yet to be identified, but a number of scientists say
that will inevitably occur and become the key factor in
pushing maximum life span beyond Calment's 122, perhaps to
150 or more.
It's certainly a record that Guinness will keep tracking, as
it has since its first 1955 listing, which was later found
to be erroneous (a son claimed to be born in the year of his
father, who had the same name). Verification methods are
more rigorous in recent years, and there's now a fairly
clear line of succession to the record upon death of the
titleholder.
"This is one of our standard flagship kind of records," said
Stewart Newport, head of research for London-based Guinness.
"It's one people are always interested in because
ultimately, we're all having a go at it."
Benkner, who uses a walker to get to meals and weekly church
services and hair appointments within Glenellen, says she
still looks forward to each day and sees no point in
stopping. She always looks straight ahead when she speaks,
an aspect of her bad eyesight, but that's reflective as well
of her lack of regrets about life or worries about things
she can't control.
She hums gently to herself from time to time. With O'Hare's
prompting, the oldest person ever to have set foot in
Pittsburgh even launched into her favorite song for
visitors.
"Count your many blessings, count them one by one," Benkner
sang lightly. "Count your blessings, see what God has done."
ANSWER: This may be the most over-written obituary we've ever had here.
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