World's Oldest Person Dies
P A R I S, June 6 -- A 115-year-old French woman, believed to be theworld's oldest person, died today, ending a journey throughlife that spanned three centuries.
Marie Bremont died in her sleep at 2:15 a.m. at a retirementhome where she lived in Cande, 150 miles west of Paris, said hernephew, Georges Crespin, one of two surviving family members.
"For the past eight to 10 days she was a bit more tired thanusual," said the retirement home director, Joseph Foucher. "Shedied calmly, in the image of her life."
At Bremont's 115th birthday on April 25, she dressed up in a redsuit and shared strawberry cake and a glass of white wine withfriends at the retirement home. She listened as three girls — eachborn almost exactly a century after Bremont — recited a poemwritten by staff members of the home.
Bremont's sight and hearing had deteriorated, but Foucher said she told him after the party that she was"proud to be the doyenne of humanity."
Hard Road to the Oldest Title
She was considered the world's oldest person since the death ofEva Morris of Britain in November, just four days before her 115thbirthday.
Bremont is the second French woman to hold the honor. JeanneCalment of France, died Aug. 4, 1997, at age 122.
Surviving the tests of time wasn't always easy. At 103, Bremontwas hit by a car and broke her arm.
She lost a first husband, Constant Lemaitre, during World War Iand a second, taxi driver Florentin Bremont, in 1967. "I had twogood husbands. I have always been happy," she once said.
Born in 1886 in the village of Noellet in western France, thedaughter of a lumberjack, Bremont began working at age 8 on a farmcarrying buckets of pig feed.
She later worked as a pharmaceutical factory worker, nanny andseamstress in the Paris region, where she met her husbands.
Like many poor rural folk, she went to Paris in 1906, at the ageof 20, to find work.
"My eyes were wide open. I marveled at everything. Oh, theEiffel Tower!" she told Paris Match magazine in an interview inApril. "In the workshop, with my colleagues, we often talked abouta strange invention: the television."
