Edie Ceccarelli, pride of Willits and 2nd oldest person in world, dies at 116

Edith Ceccarelli, for more than a year the oldest living American and for far longer the pride of Willits, died Thursday in her sleep.

Her gentle passing came not quite three weeks after her hometown in the heart of Mendocino County grandly celebrated the Feb. 5 birthday that made her only the second person alive to attain age 116.

Since her death, tears have flowed at Willits’ six-resident Holy Ghost Residential Care Home, where Ceccarelli, who went by Edie, lived since she was 107. Prior to that, she fared well alone in her Willits home.

“I hope people understand, it’s sad,” said Perla Gonzalez, co-owner of the Holy Ghost residence. She said Edie Ceccarelli was so much more than old.

Gonzalez remembers Edie offering her most classic piece of advice for extraordinary longevity: “Have a couple of fingers of red wine with your dinner, and mind your own business.”

But, in truth, Gonzalez said Friday, “I think the secret was really her positivity, and her sincerity and kindness. I don’t think she ever thought bad about other people.”

Gonzalez said Ceccarelli also was, all her life, extraordinarily active, healthy and vital — and a member of the Clean Plate Club. “We know she loved to eat,” Gonzalez said.

For the most part she required no assistance at the table, but now and again in recent weeks, she showed little or no interest in her meals.

On Thursday, Gonzalez said, her caregivers at the Holy Ghost home helped her eat a bit of strawberry yogurt, a few tastes of applesauce and a couple of spoonfuls of perhaps her favorite food — ice cream. That was all.

The woman renowned for being born in 1908 and for dressing impeccably and greeting people on her long walks through Willits mostly slept on Thursday. Said Gonzalez, “I would say that for the last week we just kept her in bed because she was too weak to sit or stand.”

A hospice nurse had been visiting. Edie’s primary care doctor, Elizabeth Olson, came whenever Gonzalez reached out to her. Edie’s cousins in Willits arranged Thursday for a priest to offer the last rites.

Gonzales said everyone involved in Edie’s care could not have been more responsive. “The beauty of a small town,” she said.

When the end came at midafternoon Thursday, said Gonzalez, “It was very peaceful.”

The global wonder had lived — and for the most part lived very well — for 116 years and 17 days.

How many other human beings ever are verified to have lived to age 116? Not even 30.

On Friday, Willits Mayor Saprina Rodriguez was missing Edie.

“Despite the fact she was 116, we were all cheering and rooting for her next birthday,” Rodriguez said. She said that in Willits, a city of only about 5,000, Edie was well known and deeply admired.

“We’ll definitely take a moment of silence for her at the next council meeting,” the mayor said.

Rodriguez may always remember when on Feb. 4, just before the start of the city’s long, 116th birthday parade, she was alongside Ceccarelli when she was presented a glorious, decorated cake and was told it was her birthday.

“Her eyes just kind of lit up and she said, ‘What? It’s my birthday!’” Rodriguez recalled.

A moment later, Edie traced a couple of fingers along the icing and tasted it. Then she ran her fingers along the cake again.

That Feb. 4 parade was, despite a wet and windy storm, the biggest ever for Ceccarelli. News stories about it ran in the New York Times, on ABC World News with David Muir and elsewhere.

In recent years, as deaths occurred among the few people on Earth older than she, Ceccarelli unwittingly achieved one distinction after another.

She became the oldest person living in California on July 2, 2022.

On Jan. 3, 2023, with the passing of 115-year-old Bessie Hendricks of Iowa, Ceccarelli became the oldest living American.

On Oct. 16, 2023, she turned 115 years and 253 days old, the age required to set a record as the oldest person ever to have lived in California.

Just last Dec. 12, Fusa Tatsumi died in Japan at 116. On that day, researchers with the Guinness Book of World Records and the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group moved Edie up from the Earth’s third oldest living person, to second.

That is where she was on Thursday, one notch below Maria Branyas Morera of Spain, whose 117th birthday is March 4.

“She lived a great life,” said cousin Lee Persico, also of Willits. “I just wish she’d outlasted the other lady and made it to the Oldest in the World.”

Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group had heard a great deal about Ceccarelli when he and colleague Natalie Coles came to see her in Willits last fall. Young, the group’s director of supercentenarian (110 years old and older) research and database division, was impressed.

Though she clearly showed signs of dementia, he said, “she still seemed fairly sharp. She still had her personality.”

Young learned Ceccarelli was always so healthy she not only had no prescription medication in her medicine cabinet, she didn’t keep even aspirin.

“She didn’t die from sickness,” said Young. “She died because her body reached its biological limit for her.”

Asked to suggest what other essentials of a historically long life Ceccarelli might have possessed, Young noted that she was always slender, she drank alcohol in moderation and she was reliably sociable, upbeat, active and self-directed. As far as he could tell, he said, “She lived the life she wanted.”

Cousin by marriage Evelyn Persico, who’s married to Lee Persico, said, “She was such a people-person … she was so friendly and outgoing.”

Evelyn Persico admired Ceccarelli also for her generosity, much of it directed to children. Persico added, “She was always willing to help a person who was in need.”

But she was no wallflower.

“She was feisty, too,” she said. “She wouldn’t hesitate to tell you what side your bread was buttered on.”

Evelyn Persico has no doubt that her cousin’s extreme longevity was helped along by her remarkable stamina, and by the joy she found nearly all of her life in dancing and in walking.

Often cited — along with physical activity — as traits of supercentenarians are a personal sense of purpose, a healthful diet, connection with family, community and friends, a tendency to sleep well, and follow strategies for easing stress.

It appears to be very helpful also to be female and to have longevity in ones genes. S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois, once said about living well past 100, “You can’t make it out that far without having already won the genetic lottery at birth.”

Neither of Edie’s parents, Italian immigrants Agostino and Maria Recagno, lived to see 110. But both made it well into their 90s.

Edith Recagno was the firstborn of the couple’s seven children. Big news the year of her birth, 1908, included the introduction of the Ford Model T.

Edith arrived in a Willits house that her father built and that was without electricity or running water. Agostino also founded a grocery store in Willits in 1916.

She once wrote that her dad “would sit with us after dinner and help us read. He only had a third-grade education, but he was smart. I can still see the oil lamp on the table where we read.”

She graduated with the Willits Union High School Class of 1927. In 1933 she married high school sweetheart Elmer "Brick" Keenan and soon thereafter moved with him to Santa Rosa, where he went to work as a typesetter with The Press Democrat.

The Keenans settled onto Santa Rosa's Benton Street. They adopted a daughter, Laureen, who would grow up to marry and have three children. Each lived with an inherited condition; Edie outlived them all.

The Keenans lived in Santa Rosa for nearly 40 years. When Brick retired from the PD in 1971, he and Edie returned to quieter, smaller Willits. They had a house built on Willits' Mendocino Avenue.

Brick Keenan died in 1984. His widow later married Charles Ceccarelli. They'd lived happily for just a few years when Charles died in 1990.

Widowed and absent a dance partner, Edie at age 104, in 2012, placed an ad in the Willits paper. It read, “I, Edith Ceccarelli, also known as ‘Edie’ by her family and a multitude of friends, would like to keep on dancing.

“Dancing keeps your limbs strong. What is nicer than holding a lovely lady in your arms and dancing a beautiful waltz or two-step together.” Edie invited prospective dance partners to give her a call.

A fellow phoned her and they went dancing a few times before Edie decided to let the arrangement go. As Lee Persico recalls, she thought her new dance partner gripped a buck a bit too tightly.

Though she remained phenomenally healthy and active past age 110, memory loss and diminished awareness did slip up on her.

Perla Gonzalez, who operates the Holy Spirit Residential Care Home with her husband, Genaro, recalled the night she discovered that Edie was up, though it was quite late, and was doing what she was renowned for — grooming and dressing stylishly.

Gonzalez asked her what she was doing. She responded spiritedly, “I don’t want to be late for my own funeral!”

The people closest to Edie say it’s too early to say if or when a service will be held.

Chris Smith is a retired Press Democrat reporter and columnist. You can reach him at csmith54@sonic.net.