YORK, Pa. — Helen Ida Wheat, the third oldest American, died Tuesday night at her assisted living facility in Frederick, Md.
She was 113.
"She was just an inspiration to everybody," said her son, Richard Naylor, proprietor of Naylor Winery in Stewartstown. "She was just so positive about everything. She made the world a better place to live."
Wheat was born Sept. 16, 1902, the youngest of four children. She was the third oldest living American at the time of her death, according to records kept by the Gerontology Research Group. She was 15th oldest person in the world.
"She always said, 'I don’t know why the good Lord keeps me around," her daughter, Janey Andrews, one of her three children, who lives in Frederick, said in September when Wheat turned 113.
Wheat went to school in York, but quit in the sixth grade to work at the York Ice Co. to help her family.
She married twice. Her first husband, Harvey Pierce Naylor, was a grocer and, later, a machinist. They divorced when her children were young. She then married Bill Wheat, a conductor on the rail line between New York and Washington, and moved to Maryland.
In her later years, she worked at her son's winery, doing everything from working in the vineyards picking grapes to affixing labels on bottles. She worked until she was 97, her son said. She worked in the fields and drove a car until she was 93.
She liked wine and attributed to longevity to having a glass every evening. She also credited her positive attitude and her deep faith.
She also loved music and taught herself to play piano and organ when her church needed an organist.
She was 17 when women got the right to vote, but she never voted, her daughter said.
"She never believed in women voting," her daughter said Wednesday. "I don't know why. I guess she didn't feel it was woman's place."
She has nine grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren.
"She was an amazing lady," Andrews said. "She was just a great person. Her shoes will be hard to fill."
The oldest people in the world
York native Helen Wheat was the third-oldest person in the United States, the oldest living in Maryland and the 15st-oldest in the world.
- The world's oldest living person is Susannah Mushatt Jones, 116, of New York City, born on July 6, 1899.
- There are 9 other people in the world who are 113 years old.
- The oldest person to have ever lived was Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France. Calment was born Feb. 21, 1875, and died on Aug. 4, 1997, making her 122 years, 164 days old at the time of her death.
