113 CANDLES! Canton’s Gibson, state’s oldest person, marks birthday today
A photo collage in her Waltonwood Carriage Park room depicts highlights of Bonita Gibson’s amazing 113 years of living life to the fullest.
Born one year before the Titanic sank, Canton resident is still going strong as she celebrates her 113th birthday today on July 4th.
Gibson continues her reign as Michigan’s oldest living person as she embraces each day at the Waltonwood Carriage Park senior-living center on Canton Center Road in Canton.
Gibson takes her special endurance distinction in stride.
“I don’t even think about it,” she said with a sincere tone, during an interview with SocialHouseNews.com last year.
“It really doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m just happy to be as healthy as I am. Whenever the nurse comes in to check me, she tells me she can’t believe how good my (vitals) are.”
Clean living
Never a smoker or a drinker, Gibson said her simplistic diet during her younger years probably played a role in her longevity.
“We didn’t have a lot of money,” she said. “What money we did have, my aunt and uncle bought coffee and sugar. Everything we ate, we grew ourselves.
“Once a month, my uncle would go to town and buy oranges and bananas. My aunt would mix them together and that would be our dessert for three or four days.”
To put Gibson’s amazing longevity in perspective, the average life expectancy in the United States in 2020 was 79.1 years — a milestone she passed in 1991.
Less than 600 older than 110
And according to cdc.org, the number of people alive in 2015 who were 110 years old or older was somewhere between 150 and 600.
As of May 2024, Elizabeth Francis is the oldest living person in the United States at 114 years old. Francis was born in Louisiana on July 25, 1909, and lives in Houston, Texas. Francis is the fifth-oldest person in the world.
The oldest living man in the United States is 109-year-old Eugene Baltes, who was born Oct. 29, 1914 — a mere youngster compared to Canton’s Gibson, who is aging like a fine wine.
