Arkansas Woman, Believed to Be Oldest Person In the World, Dies
She was 116 and her mind was said to be sharp until the end.
— -- The world's oldest person, 116-year-old Gertrude Weaver of Arkansas, died Monday, a spokesperson for her nursing home told ABC News.
The Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Center in Camden, Arkansas, said she died from compications of pneumonia. "We're so sad about it," a staffer at the nursing home said. "She did everything on her bucket list and her mind was very sharp."
Weaver, who was born in 1898, had been the oldest person in America, but last week she became the oldest person in the world when 117-year-old Misao Okawa in Japan had died, according to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, which tracks supercentenarians.
Weaver had said she wanted President Barack Obama to attend her 117th birthday party on the Fourth of July, according to ABC affiliate KATV.
The Guinness Book of World Records was to make the final call on the oldest person, said Robert Moore, director of the research group's supercentenarians program, the Associated Press reported.
"When people pass away, there is often an application process ... but they may not wait for that process to name her the oldest person in the world," he told the AP last week. "Only five documented people have ever reached 117."
Weaver was raised in a small unincorporated community outside of Texarkana and has lived in Arkansas almost all of her life. The Gerontology Research Group used 1900 census records, which listed Weaver as 2 years old, and a marriage license from 1915 that listed her age as 17 to determine she was the oldest living American.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
