Just five days after becoming the world’s oldest documented person, 116-year-old Gertrude Weaver passed away Monday in Arkansas. Supercentenarian Weaver became the oldest person in the world after the death of 117-year-old Misao Okawa (of Japan) last week, according to records kept by the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group. Weaver was born in southwest Arkansas in 1898 to sharecropper parents. The Williams Funeral Home confirmed that Weaver died of natural causes just after 10 a.m. Monday at the Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Center in Camden, AK (about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock). Camden Mayor Marie Trisollini stated that she was a very kind, sweet lady. Trisollini added that Weaver was relatively perky and sharp as a tack when she spoke to her during her roommate’s 100th birthday party last week. Michigan’s Jeralean Talley is now considered to be the world’s oldest living person at age 115. Talley was born in 1899 in Georgia, traveled to Michigan in 1935 and has been there ever since.
