Edna Parker, 115, oldest person in the world

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. - Edna Parker, 115, who more than a year ago became the world's oldest person, has died.

UCLA gerontologist Stephen Coles said Ms. Parker's great-nephew had notified him that she died Wednesday at a nursing home in Shelbyville.

Ms. Parker was born April 20, 1893, in central Indiana's Morgan County. She had been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest person since the 2007 death in Japan of Yone Minagawa, who was four months her senior.

Coles, who maintains a list of the world's oldest people, said Ms. Parker was the 14th-oldest validated supercentenarian in history. Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who was born Sept. 10, 1893, is now the world's oldest living person, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

Ms. Parker had been a widow since her husband, Earl Parker, died in 1939 of a heart attack. She lived alone in their farmhouse until age 100, when she moved into a son's home and later to the Shelbyville nursing home.

Although she never drank alcohol or tried tobacco and led an active life, Ms. Parker did not offer tips for living a long life. Her only advice to those who gathered to celebrate when she became the oldest person was "more education."

Ms. Parker outlived her two sons, Clifford and Earl Jr. She had five grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 13 great-great-grandchildren.

"We don't know why she's lived so long," Don Parker said before his grandmother's 115th birthday. "But she's never been a worrier, and she's always been a thin person, so maybe that has something to do with it."

Ms. Parker taught in a two-room school in Shelby County for several years until she wed her childhood sweetheart and neighbor in 1913. The same year, she graduated from Franklin College with a teaching certificate.

As was the tradition in that era, her teaching career ended with her marriage. Ms. Parker traded the schoolhouse for life as a farmer's wife, preparing meals for as many as a dozen men who worked on her husband's farm.

Ms. Parker noted with pride last year that she and her husband were among the first people to own an automobile in their rural area.