Two of the World's Oldest People Die on Same Day

Lisa Flam Contributor

(March 8) -- Sunday was a sad day for supercentenarians: Two of the 10 oldest people in the world died within a 24-hour span.

"March 7, 2010, will go down in history as the first time two top-10 supercentenarians died on the same day," said Robert Young, of the Gerontology Research Group. "This is a very elite group, the very top of the population pyramid."

Mary Josephine Ray, certified by the research group as the oldest person living in the U.S. and the second oldest in the world, died early Sunday at a nursing home in Westmoreland, N.H. She was 114 years and 294 days old.

Hours later, Daisey Bailey, the oldest living black person in the world and the fifth oldest person in the world, died at 10:03 p.m. in Detroit, Young said. Born March 30, 1896, in Tennessee, she was 113 years and 342 days old, Young said. The gerontology group certified her age using two Censuses, but her family believes she was born on the same day one year earlier, he added.
 

"It's sad." Young said. "Mary Josephine was looking forward to 115," and Bailey had a 114th birthday party coming up.

Bailey, who suffered from dementia for the last 10 years, liked to garden and spend time with friends and family, said her granddaughter and caretaker Helen Arnold.

"She was a sweet person," Arnold said. "She just enjoyed life and people."

Growing up on a farm in Tennessee, Bailey helped heat the house the old-fashioned way. "She used to carry the wood on her shoulders," Arnold said. She also ironed and washed clothes to earn money for the family.

Bailey had four children and outlived them all. "She was like a mother to me," said Arnold, 73.

Although Mary Josephine hadn't been feeling well in recent weeks, she recently got dressed and got into her wheelchair to give an interview to a reporter. "She loved all the attention," her daughter-in-law, Barbara Ray, told the New Hampshire Union Leader.

"She just enjoyed life," her granddaughter, Katherine Ray, told The Associated Press. "She never thought of dying at all. She was planning for her birthday party."
 

"I think we're going to miss her; she was a big part of our day," Trisha Moore, a licensed nursing assistant at the Maplewood County Nursing Home, told the Union Leader.

Moore said Ray was pleased when a girl wrote her to ask for her autograph. "When she got mail from fans, she got really excited," Moore told the newspaper.

Ray was born in Canada's Prince Edward Island on May 17, 1895. She moved to the U.S. at age 3 and lived for 60 years in Maine. She moved to Westmoreland in 2002 to be near her children.

With Ray's death, the oldest living American is Neva Morris of Ames, Iowa, at 114 years, 216 days. The world's oldest person is Japan's Kama Chinen. She is 114 years, 301 days, a week older than Ray was.

The gerontology group, which studies why the oldest people live as long as they do, now has 75 validated supercentenarians worldwide -- those age 110 or older. Seventy-two are women.