RIP: Daisey Bailey

Daisey Bailey
30 March 1896 - 7 March 2010

The fourth-oldest person in the world has died. ZUI this article from the Detroit News:

Bailey died of organ failure Sunday at Henry Ford Hospital. The Detroit resident was the fifth oldest person in the world and the oldest living black person as certified by the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks people who are 100 years and older.

She would have turned 115 March 30, said her granddaughter Helen Arnold.

Bailey was one of two supercentenarians, or those older than 110, who died Sunday. Mary Josephine Ray, who was certified as the oldest person living in the United States, died at age 114 years, 294 days, at a nursing home in Westmoreland, N.H.

Bailey's family said she was born in 1895, in Watertown, Tenn. The Gerontology Research Group puts Bailey's birthday a year later, based on U.S. census records.

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Bailey's secret to longevity? She liked "taking a nip" of old bourbon whenever she could, Arnold said.

Bailey was rarely ill and suffered mostly from mild cases of hypertension and arthritis, Arnold said. Arnold also attributed her grandmother's long life to eating a lot of vegetables and pork. "She didn't eat nothing but pork, no beef," she said.

In addition to being the fourth-oldest person in the world, Bailey was the second-oldest person in the united States at the time of her death. (The oldest person in the world is Japanese, and the third-oldest is French.) She is the first supercentenarian listed by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) to die since the death of Mary Josephine Ray just a few hours earlier on 11 September.

The GRG's list of validated living supercentenarians (people who have reached their 110th birthday) currently includes 75 people (3 men and 72 women), ranging from Kama Chinen of Japan (born 10 May 1895) to Domenica Di Tomasso-Ciccheli of Italy (born 11 Feb 1900). The oldest person in the United States is now Neva Morris of Iowa (born 3 Aug 1895), the world's second-oldest person; 20 other supercentenarians live in the US, though none are in Michigan.