@mrcatlord is she not celebrating her birthday on the 5th February then. It says 4th February

Posted by: @billy-robinson

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@mrcatlord is she not celebrating her birthday on the 5th February then. It says 4th February

It looks like her birthday parade is happening the day before her birthday (this is CanadianSC from WSF by the way)

https://www.willitsnews.com/2024/01/19/willits-resident-turning-116-youre-invited-to-the-next-birthday-party-of-americas-oldest-person/

It’s perhaps the biggest birthday party in the country and everyone is invited: Willits resident Edith “Edie” Ceccarelli, who as of Friday was the oldest living person in the United States, will turn 116 on Feb. 5, 2024.
Since her actual birthday falls on a Monday this year, the annual celebration will be held on Sunday, Feb. 4, and again feature a parade of well-wishers driving by her residential home at 414 Grove St. in Willits.
Everyone is invited to participate in this year’s festivities, scheduled to be held from 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. If you do drive by her home, organizers ask that you “drive by with a decorated car (signs, streamers, balloons, flags) and wave as you pass her house to wish her a happy birthday!”
Born on Feb. 5, 1908 in Willits, Ceccarelli is now the oldest-known living person in the United States and the second oldest in the world. According to Wikipedia, Maria Branyas Morera, who will be 117 next month (born March 4, 1907), is an American-born Spanish woman who has been the world’s oldest verified living person since the death of Lucile Randon (1904–2023) on Jan.17, 2023.
Delivered at home, Ceccarelli was the first of seven children born to Italian immigrants Agostino and Maria Recagno in a house on Flower Street that was built by her father and had neither electricity nor running water.
She graduated from Willits Union High School in ’27, married Elmer “Brick” Keenan in ’33 and moved to Santa Rosa where they adopted a daughter. They returned to Willits when Brick retired in ’71. After Brick’s death in ‘84, she married Charles Ceccarelli. He died in ‘90.

At 108 she attributed her longevity to not smoking or drinking, except for a glass of wine with dinner, staying out of squabbles, being honest, working hard and appreciating the little things.
And for most of her extraordinarily long life, nothing could keep Ceccarelli from dancing. And instead of finally deciding to sit out the music at age 104 when she lost her longtime partner of 20 years, Ceccarelli wrote her local newspaper in the hopes of finding a new partner.
She lived independently until she was 107, after which she moved into a senior living facility, and over the past few years her cognitive faculties have diminished due to dementia.
These days, Edie is far less active and engaged, sitting calmly for last year’s neighborhood birthday celebration. Family member Evelyn Persico said dementia has now shrouded much of the vibrant woman’s personality, but there are still moments when she comes dancing back.
“Suddenly she’ll say, ‘It’s Feb. 5. It’s my birthday!’” Persico said.

https://news.yahoo.com/birthday-preparations-underway-america-oldest-210942611.html

A birthday celebration is coming up for a Northern Californian woman who is the oldest living person in the United States.

Edith “Edie” Recagno Keenan Ceccarelli, of Willits, will turn 116 and be celebrated with a drive-by parade in the city on Feb. 4.

Ceccarelli is a pillar in the community, as her birthday in recent years has become a community tradition.

“We’re hoping the weather is going to be cooperative so they can have her out and view the parade and the parade people can see her,” Evelyn Perisco told FOX40.com.

Born on Feb. 5, 1908, with Recagno as her maiden name, Ceccarelli is the second oldest person in the world. The world’s oldest person is 116-year-old Maria Branyas of Spain, who was born in San Francisco.

The Keenan surname comes from Ceccarelli’s first husband and her current last name is from her second husband.

Ceccarelli has lived in California her entire life, being born and raised in the small town of Willits, which has a population of 4,988. She is the eldest of seven, outliving all of her siblings.

Throughout her life, Ceccarelli has lived in different places throughout Northern California such as Eureka, Santa Rosa, and Ukiah.

A huge turnout is expected for Ceccarelli’s 116th birthday celebration, as last year’s drive-by parade was bigger than the year before, Perisco said. The drive-by celebration is being held one day before Ceccarelli’s actual birthday on a Sunday to enable more people to attend.

“I think it’s going to be very well attended,” Perisco said. “Hard to put a number on it, but last year it went for a couple of hours.”

Perisco has known Ceccarelli since the latter was a centenarian, and has admired her over the years. She grew closer to Ceccarelli after spending time and getting closer to her since her retirement.

Perisco married into Ceccarelli’s family, as her husband Lee Perisco and his brother Charles Perisco are Ceccarelli’s second cousins.

“She would ask ‘Why am I still here? I don’t understand it’ and I said ‘Edie, God has a plan for you,’” Perisco said. “My conclusion, I just feel she’s God’s chosen one”

Edie Ceccarelli is now 10 days away from her 116th birthday.

Edie Ceccarelli is now just 5 days away from her 116th birthday.

New video from December (it says video unavailable for me but it still works when I click on the link)

Sadly she is not doing well anymore

I see that Edie Ceccarelli has had a noticeable decline and spends most of her time in bed.

I thought the Christmas photo was a "tender moment" where she was sleeping and they thought it would be cute to take a photo of her.

However, I think she still sees well, she can still communicate, open her eyes and understand what is being said to her, she is still conscious.

They're also having a parade on her birthday, that means she'll be there, so it's cool.

Although she has had a decline, it doesn't look that bad either.

Posted by: @adancho

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I see that Edie Ceccarelli has had a noticeable decline and spends most of her time in bed.

 

I thought the Christmas photo was a "tender moment" where she was sleeping and they thought it would be cute to take a photo of her.

 

However, I think he still sees well, he can still communicate, open his eyes and understand what is being said to him, he is still conscious.

 

They're also having a parade on her birthday, that means she'll be there, so it's cool.

 

Although it has had a decline, it doesn't look that bad either.

It's really sad seeing her like this

She was always one of the strongest SCs up until 2022, even when the GRG visited her in October she looked better than in the new video

I wonder then how they will bring her out for the parade. Hopefully she is still well enough to sit and doesn't have to lie down. Two years ago she could still walk

Posted by: @mrcatlord

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Posted by: @adancho

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I see that Edie Ceccarelli has had a noticeable decline and spends most of her time in bed.

 

I thought the Christmas photo was a "tender moment" where she was sleeping and they thought it would be cute to take a photo of her.

 

However, I think he still sees well, he can still communicate, open his eyes and understand what is being said to him, he is still conscious.

 

They're also having a parade on her birthday, that means she'll be there, so it's cool.

 

Although it has had a decline, it doesn't look that bad either.

It's really sad seeing her like this

She was always one of the strongest SCs up until 2022, even when the GRG visited her in October she looked better than in the new video

I wonder then how they will bring her out for the parade. Hopefully she is still well enough to sit and doesn't have to lie down. Two years ago she could still walk

 

So we will have to wait a few days until her birthday to see new photos and videos.

I'm interested to know what she will look like in the show.

So there we can have a clearer idea about her condition.

Although we don't truly feel comments about Edie's appearance have been disrespectful, we do notice that as the team of Admins and Moderators we struggle with what sort of comments are appropriate to make about living SCs and what comments are not. This is a polite reminder for everyone to stay respectful. (Once more, nothing here was disrespectful or inappropriate.)

Please be aware that sometimes family members or friends of supercentenarians are also active online and might see these comments about their loved ones. How would you feel if you read about your grandmother, friend, close neighbour that complete strangers felt that these respected elderly people were declining?

It's true, I think a little of what I said was unnecessary.

I would like to know what they edited? I see my answer for what it was.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/02/02/edie-recagno-oldest-person-in-us/72379267007/

Ceccarelli is perhaps most excited for the carrot cake her family ordered for Sunday, said Perla Gonzalez, one of Ceccarelli's caretakers at Willits' Holy Spirit Residential Care Home.

"She got very excited when she learned the cake would be carrot cake," Gonzalez said. "She said, 'Oh really, honey?,' and lit up."

New photo:

https://www.willitsweekly.com/documents/WillitsWeekly_02012024_A&BPages.pdf

"Family member and friend Evelyn Persico is excited to see another year come for Ceccarelli, who, has had some ups and downs health-wise in the last few weeks, but seems to be ready for her upcoming party."

Let’s hope the “up’s and downs” reflect the back end of the winter, rather than anything else.

Posted by: @mendocino

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New photo:

-- attachment is not available --

https://www.willitsweekly.com/documents/WillitsWeekly_02012024_A&BPages.pdf

"Family member and friend Evelyn Persico is excited to see another year come for Ceccarelli, who, has had some ups and downs health-wise in the last few weeks, but seems to be ready for her upcoming party."

She's looking better than in the video from December, that was probably one of the "downs". It is nice to see her this well again

I think what we can say is that this is a very elegant and dignified picture of a lady on the cusp of her 116th birthday.

Another photo from this article, taken in July

Edie Ceccarelli is now just one day away from her 116th birthday.

Edie's birthday parade has now started

Photos (and a video) from today:

https://photographress.zenfolio.com/edie116

Here's an entire photo album from the photographer at her celebration

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/us/e ... ornia.html

New York Times Article

At 116, She Has Outlived Generations of Loved Ones. But Her Entire Town Has Become Family.
When the nation’s oldest person has a birthday, a California community makes sure to celebrate.

When Edith Ceccarelli was born in February 1908, Theodore Roosevelt was president, Oklahoma had just become the nation’s 46th state and women did not yet have the right to vote.

At 116, Ms. Ceccarelli is the oldest known person in the United States and the second oldest on Earth. She has lived through two World Wars, the advent of the Ford Model T — and the two deadliest pandemics in American history.

For most of that time, she has lived in one place: Willits, a village tucked in California’s redwood forests that was once known for logging but now may be better known for Ms. Ceccarelli.

At Willits City Hall, where 100-foot redwoods tower overhead, a gold-framed photograph of Ms. Ceccarelli sits in a display case. Last year, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors proclaimed Feb. 5 as a day to celebrate the county’s favorite daughter.

Saprina Rodriguez, the mayor of Willits, presented Ms. Ceccarelli with a proclamation before her birthday celebration.

“When she hit her hundredth birthday, the whole community was kind of in awe, and she became a bit of a local celebrity,” said Mayor Saprina Rodriguez, who at 52 is less than half Ms. Ceccarelli’s age.

Nestled in a valley surrounded by forested peaks in rural Mendocino County, in California’s North Coast region, Willits prospered from its booming lumber industry when Ms. Ceccarelli was a little girl. But that boom is long gone, and Willits remains a small, working-class community of about 5,000 people.

Because it is about 30 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, Willits has never attracted the tourists who flock to coastal destinations like Mendocino and Fort Bragg, with their Instagrammable wineries and cottages perched on seaside bluffs, along with whale-watching opportunities.

But neither of those places has Ms. Ceccarelli.

On Sunday, Willits hosted its annual celebration for its most treasured resident, who watched from the porch of her care home. It was raining, the beginning of another atmospheric river — what they just called downpours for most of Ms. Ceccarelli’s life — but nobody in Willits gave a thought to canceling the annual festivities.

A parade of flashing police cruisers and fire trucks passed by. Then a garbage truck. Sedans adorned with garlands, balloons and flowers followed, ferrying residents who waved and sang to their beloved Edie.

“She’s a local icon,” said Suzanne Picetti-Johnson, a longtime Willits resident who had donned a rain jacket and beanie and was directing an S.U.V. with “Happy Sweet 116!” scrawled on its rear window. “She’s always been just a total delight, and we’re thrilled to celebrate her one more year.”

On Feb. 5, 1908, Edith Recagno was delivered by her aunt in a house in Willits that her father had built by hand. The home had no electricity or running water, so a hand-dug well provided the family with drinking water and, in lieu of a refrigerator, a cool place to hang milk and meat.

She was the first of seven children born to Agostino and Maria Recagno, who were Italian immigrants drawn to Mendocino County by opportunity. Willits, where bright green moss covers tree trunks and giant ferns unfurl along the banks of icy creeks, was settled by pioneering ranchers in the 1850s as fortune-seekers flocked to California during the Gold Rush.

But then big trees became big business here. Groves of ancient redwoods and other trees were chopped down and sent south to help build a fast-growing San Francisco. Ms. Ceccarelli’s father worked as a carpenter to extend the railroad to Willits, which by the early 1900s allowed Bay Area tourists to come and vacation in the Redwood Empire’s crisp mountain air. For $2.50 a night, guests at the 100-room Hotel Willits enjoyed on-site tennis courts, a bowling alley and a dining room known as the finest north of San Francisco.

Growing up, Ms. Ceccarelli played basketball, tennis and saxophone — her mother had to save up money to buy the instrument — and she loved to sing and dance. She recalled that her father, who opened a grocery store in Willits in 1916, would chop firewood and haul it home after work.

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

From there, Ms. Ceccarelli’s life unfolded like many others. She married her high school sweetheart, Elmer Keenan, when she was 25, and they moved to nearby Santa Rosa, where he took a job as a typesetter at The Press Democrat newspaper. The couple soon adopted a baby daughter. In 1971, after her husband retired, the pair returned to Willits.

Ms. Ceccarelli continued to age, but not everyone in her life was so lucky. Her husband died in 1984, after more than 50 years of marriage. Ms. Ceccarelli remarried, and her second husband, Charles Ceccarelli, died in 1990. Her daughter died, at age 64, in 2003. Ms. Ceccarelli has since outlived her six younger siblings, as well as her three granddaughters, who each died in their 40s because of a genetic condition.

“They’re all gone — they’ve been gone for years and years,” Evelyn Persico, 84, said while thumbing through black-and-white photo albums captioned in Ms. Ceccarelli’s cursive. Ms. Persico, who is married to Ms. Ceccarelli’s second cousin and lives on a ranch in Willits, is one of her few remaining relatives.

So when her 100th birthday approached in 2008, Ms. Ceccarelli herself extended the invitation to all of Willits. Despite decades of change, such as the 101 highway cutting through Main Street and the growth of marijuana farms, Willits remained a tight-knit community. The elegant Ms. Ceccarelli had become known for never missing a dance at the senior center and for her daily walks through town.

Wearing a fuchsia suit and heels, she waltzed alongside more than 500 people who had come to celebrate her new status as a centenarian, and a tiara was placed on her white hair by the mayor at the time.

From then on, Ms. Ceccarelli’s birthday each year has been marked by a party, a lunch or, in the Covid era, a parade, open to all Willits residents. Often wearing a colorful scarf and pearls, she would pass on her wisdom on how to live a long life: “Have a couple of fingers of red wine with your dinner, and mind your own business.”

Other years, she would regale guests with stories of bygone days, of meeting a man who had lunched with Abraham Lincoln or of hearing all the bells in Willits ring on Nov. 11, 1918, signaling the end of World War I.

“I like the small town, you know more people,” Ms. Ceccarelli told the local paper just before her 107th birthday party. “You go to a big city, you don’t know anybody.”

When her longtime dance partner and companion died, she turned again to Willits for support. She put an ad in the local paper:
“I, Edith Ceccarelli, also known as ‘Edie’ by her family and a multitude of friends, would like to keep on dancing,” she wrote in 2012. “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?

“Try it, you will like it,” she added, along with her phone number. She was 104 at the time.

Ms. Ceccarelli lived on her own until she was 107, and then moved into a residential care home in Willits. She has now lived 37 years longer than American women on average. The only person known to be older than her is Maria Branyas Morera, who lives in Spain, but was born in San Francisco 11 months before Ms. Ceccarelli.

The town has taken over the planning of her birthday parties, as her dementia has recently advanced, so she isn’t always aware of what is happening. On the morning of her party, she seemed satisfied to learn that everyone was there for her. She enjoyed a taste of her carrot cake adorned with “116.”

“I just marvel at her,” said Ms. Persico, who greeted Ms. Ceccarelli that day with a kiss on the forehead. “I can’t believe that this little Italian baby has such an amazing record for longevity, coming from such a small town like we are.”

https://www.willitsweekly.com/documents/WillitsWeekly_02082024_APages.pdf

The Willits Weekly newspaper has now published their issue which includes Edie's birthday

According to this, Sam Green, the filmmaker who has been visited many of the world's oldest people including Maria Branyas (who said she planned on attending the premiere), was in attendance at Edie's party and made a post on Instagram

Topic updated and moved. RIP Ms. Ceccarelli.

The video of Edie's 116th birthday parade has now been released

Also featuring a few minutes of her inside the care home

@mrcatlord The video is now private (if I had to take a guess, some unnecessary comments were left by members of the "wider community"... at least this is my gut feeling). Has anyone saved it, by any chance?

Posted by: @024tomi

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@mrcatlord The video is now private (if I had to take a guess, some unnecessary comments were left by members of the "wider community"... at least this is my gut feeling). Has anyone saved it, by any chance?

They have reuploaded it now. I think the reason was because the first video had several minutes of nothing at the end, which I assume was a mistake

She looks quite tired and less aware throughout the video. If you look at the 113th and 114th parades, she waves to the people passing a lot; even last year she looked more alert. When one of the strongest supercentenarians of all time reaches this sort of condition, you know she's near her end

So let's just be glad she made it this far

@mrcatlord thanks, I'm glad my assumption was false.

It's already been a whole month...

Here are a bunch of editions of her local newspaper documenting her from 107 to 116

107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116 (before birthday), 116 (after birthday), death, obituary (pictured above)