RIP: Delma Kollar

Delma Kollar

31 Oct 1897 - 24 Jan 2012

ZUI this article from the Eugene (OR) Register-Guard:

She lived in three different centuries and celebrated more birthdays than most human beings who ever lived. But just like the rest of us, Delma Kollar, the oldest known Oregonian, who was thought by official record-keepers to be the world’s fourth-oldest person, proved to be mortal after all. She died Tuesday morning at the Creswell Health and Rehabilitation Center at the age of 114. Or was it 113?

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According to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, which verifies the ages of supercentenarians (110 or older) worldwide for the Guinness Book of World Records, Kollar was born on Oct. 31, 1897.

Kollar’s family says she wasn’t issued a birth certificate until the 1950s. Family members say she was born Delma Dorothie Lowman on Oct. 31, 1898, in Lone Elm, Kan. But based on 1900 and 1910 census records found online a few years ago by Gerontology Research Group analyst Robert Young, the group listed her birthday as 1897.

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A schoolteacher in Kansas and California before moving to Oregon in 1982 with her second husband, Harry Kollar, Delma Kollar outlived both her husbands (her first husband and college sweetheart, Earl Hoggatt, died in 1966) and two of her three children. She had six grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren, 11 great-great-grandchildren and one great-great-great-grandchild.

Jean Cooper, 87, of Cottage Grove, is Kollar’s lone surviving child. Her other two children, Bill Hoggatt and Earlene Duncan, died in their 60s, he of congestive heart failure, she of a brain tumor. Kollar’s parents both lived into their 90s, and she had two aunts who lived past 100, according to a family history that Kollar put together years ago.

I haven't blogged about supercentenarians for a while. The Gerontology Research Group (GRG) reports that a total of 75 (71 women and 4 men) died in 2011, including 114-year-old Maria Gomes Valentim (9 Jul 1896–21 Jun 2011), of Brazil, who at the time of her death was listed as the oldest person in the world. Kollar is the fifth supercentenarian listed as dying in 2012, the others being Marcelle Narbonne (25 Mar 1898-1 Jan 2012) of France, Frederica Sagor Maas (6 Jul 1900-5 Jan 2012) of California, Terue Ichikawa (10 May 1900-19 Jan 2012) of Japan and Angela Rogges-Marvulli (19 Nov 1900-23 Jan 2012) of Italy.

The GRG's list of validated living supercentenarians (people who have reached their 110th birthday) currently includes 72 people (6 men and 66 women), ranging from Besse Cooper of Georgia (born 26 Aug 1896 in Tennessee) to Masayo Ogawara of Japan (born 2 Aug 1901). 19 of them live in the US, though none are in Oregon.

52 of the living supercentenarians were born in the 19th century, the youngest being Hermine Nistler of Austria (born 24 Dec 1900); the oldest of those born in the 20th century is Irene Pearce of England (born 5 Jan 1901). The oldest of the six men is Jiroemon Kimura of Japan (born 19 Apr 1897), the third-oldest living person.