USA: Robert Young visits Edith Ceccarelli, 115, Doyenne of the USA

The Gerontology Research Group is delighted to report that Mr. Robert Young, the Director of the Supercentenarian Research and Database Division, as well as the Senior Gerontology Consultant for the Guinness World Records, has met Mrs. Edith Ceccarelli of Willits, California USA, aged 115, presently the Doyenne of the USA.

Edith Ceccarelli was born in Willits, California, USA on February 5, 1908. She was the first of seven children born to Italian immigrants Agostino and Maria Recagno. She married Elmer “Brick” Keenan and moved to Santa Rosa, California, where he worked as a pressman for the Santa Rosa Democrat. When he retired after 36 years, they returned to Willits. After her husband’s death in 1984, she married Charles Ceccarelli in 1986. She widowed in 1990.

LONGEVITY MILESTONES

Ceccarelli became the oldest living person in California following the death of Mila Mangold on 2 July 2022. She is currently the second-oldest validated person ever born in the U.S. state of California, after Maria Branyas Morera.

Following the death of Bessie Hendricks on January 3, 2023, Ceccarelli became the oldest validated living person in the United States (Doyenne of the USA).

Since the death of Lucile Randon on January 17, 2023, Ceccarelli has been the third-oldest living person in the world whose age is validated by the GRG, after Maria Branyas Morera and Fusa Tatsumi.

Since the death of Hazel Plummer on May 25, 2023, Ceccarelli has been the last surviving validated person in the United States who was born in 1908.

On October 16, 2023, at the age of 115 years, 253 days, she became the oldest person ever to have lived in California after surpassing the final age of Christian Mortensen of San Rafael, California.