PASSINGS: Eunice G. Sanborn
Eunice G. Sanborn
World’s oldest person was 114
Eunice G. Sanborn, 114, a Texas woman cited as the world’s oldest person, died Monday morning at her home, according to Patricia Ellis of Boren-Conner Funeral Home of Jacksonville, Texas.
FOR THE RECORD
An earlier online version of this story incorrectly said a daughter of Eunice G. Sanborn died in 1996 at age 90.
Sanborn had been recognized as the world’s oldest person since Nov. 4, when a 114-year-old nun named Eugenie Blanchard died on the French Caribbean island of St. Barts, according to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group.
The gerontology group listed her as the world’s oldest person, citing data from the 1900 census. Robert Young of the group said the title now passes to 114-year-old Besse Cooper of Monroe, Ga.
The gerontology group says Sanborn was born July 20, 1896, in Lake Charles, La., and moved to Texas in 1937. She told the Tyler Morning Telegraph newspaper that she had outlived three husbands and a daughter.
Four people took turns caring for Sanborn as she lived out her years in the two-story Victorian house she bought in the 1940s after the death of her second husband.
Her daughter and her third husband shared the house with her until their deaths.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but I’ve enjoyed it,” she told the newspaper in 2007. “Life is a wonderful thing if you make it that way. If you don’t make it right, it isn’t wonderful.”
Times staff and wire reports
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