A New Jersey woman who was the oldest American person has died, at the age of 114. Adele Dunlap died on Sunday at a hospital near Flemington, according to the Martin Funeral Home.
Dunlap became the country’s oldest person in July 2016 following the death of 113-year-old Goldie Michelson, of Worcester, Massachusetts.
A group that tracks long-living people said the oldest known person living in the US was now 113-year-old Delphine Gibson of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. The oldest person known to be alive is Emma Morano, an Italian woman who is 117 years old.
Dunlap did not have an explanation for her longevity, and neither did her children. Asked how it felt to be the oldest American, she said: “I don’t feel any different.”
Dunlap was born on 12 December 1902 in Newark, nearly 15 years before America’s entry into the first world war and while Theodore Roosevelt was president. Family and caregivers said when Dunlap was asked how old she was, she often gave a younger age.
She was a teacher before marrying and concentrating on raising three children. Her husband worked for an insurance company and died in 1963.
“She never went out jogging or anything like that,” her son, Earl Dunlap, said when his mother became the oldest American. “She’s not really thin, but she never weighed more than 140lb.
“She smoked, and when my father had his first heart attack, they both stopped. I think she ate anything she wanted.”
Earl Dunlap said his mother was not a drinker but had occasionally enjoyed a martini with her husband.
Officials at the Country Arch Care Center in Pittstown, where Dunlap arrived when she was 99, described her as a passive participant in daily activities who socialized minimally. She looked forward to Girl Scouts coming to sing Christmas carols, they said.