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MADISON

Oldest American, central Maine roots

Oldest living American spent much of life in Maine

By Erin Rhoda erhoda@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

MADISON -- There are few local people who remember Mary Josephine Ray. As the oldest person in the United States, she outlived them.

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There are few local people who remember Mary Josephine Ray. As the oldest person in the United States, she outlived them. Ray, who resided in Anson and Madison for about 60 years, died Sunday in a nursing home in Westmoreland, N.H., at age 114 years, 294 days.

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Ray, who resided in Anson and Madison for about 60 years, died Sunday in a nursing home in Westmoreland, N.H. at age 114 years, 294 days.

Ray was the oldest person in the U.S. and the second-oldest in the world, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

"She just enjoyed life. She never thought of dying at all," her granddaughter Katherine Ray told the Associated Press. "She was planning for her birthday party."

She was active until about two weeks before her death. Even with her recent decline, Ray managed an interview with a reporter last week, Katherine Ray said.

The oldest living American is now Neva Morris, of Ames, Iowa, at age 114 years, 217 days. The oldest person in the world is Japan's Kama Chinen at age 114 years, 302 days.

Ray was born May 17, 1895, in Bloomfield, Prince Edward Island, Canada. She moved to the U.S. at age 3. As a teenager, after the death of her parents, she worked on her own as a housekeeper and store clerk. She married Walter H. Ray in 1923, according to her obituary.

They lived in Anson for many years and then moved to Madison. At age 72, following the death of her husband in 1967, she moved to Florida. At age 80, she moved to Massachusetts. At age 102, she became a resident of the Maplewood Nursing Home in Westmoreland, according to her obituary.

The few local residents in Anson and Madison who remember Ray, remember her husband and his store, Walter Ray's General Store, which was once located across from the Anson town hall. There is an insurance agency in its place now.

Rodney Mitchell, 78, lives on Thomas Street in Madison, across from the home in which the Rays lived in the 1960s. Mitchell worked for Walter Ray as a butcher at the general store from 1960 to 1969. Mary Ray "didn't neighbor much," he said, but the Rays were "good neighbors."

Fran Sabol, 70, who owns Three Rivers Disposal and Three Rivers Bottle Redemption in Anson, remembers going to the "classic general store" when he was young. Walter Ray had a "great reputation," he said, because he let people purchase items on credit when many stores did not.

Sabol said, "My father lived to be 90, and he always gave a lot of credit to Walter Ray, who was the one person who carried them during the thick and the thin. I remember that well. My father always referred to him as a nice man."

The general store, which was later run by one of Ray's two sons, Donald, sold cookies by the pound, Sabol recalled. It sold soda from an old soda cooler, packed with water and ice. In addition to the usual groceries, it sold lumber, clothing, beer and grain for livestock.

Sabol said he remembers people going behind the store to drink the beer. When they left the beer bottles, he would collect and return them for two cents each.

It was a family store.

Donald Ray and his now-wife, Barbara, who grew up in Anson, worked at the general store, said Phillip Barbeau, 85, of Madison, who is Barbara's cousin. Donald and Barbara now live in Westmoreland.

Barbeau said he remembers that Walter Ray owned race horses and traveled to a number of competitions. "He was well known in that," he said.

Irene Siket, 77, of Madison, said her husband Michael, who is deceased, was once friends with Donald Ray. "They'd get a bunch of fellas and play basketball and things like that," she recalled.

The Ray's other son is Robert B. Ray. He lives with his wife Barbara in Pensacola, Fla.

Sabol said he and his wife were driving through the Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison a few months ago and saw Walter Ray's gravestone. Next to it was a gravemarker for Mary, "but nothing there," he said. He wondered why.

But there was a simple answer: she was still alive.

In addition to two sons, survivors include eight grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and five great-great grandchildren, according to the obituary.

Morris, the Iowa woman now believed to be the oldest U.S. resident, lives at a care center. Only one of her four children, a son in Sioux City, is still alive.

"She has some hearing deficiencies and a visual deficiency, but mentally she is quite alert and will respond when she feels like it and isn't too tired," said her 90-year-old son-in-law Tom Wickersham, who lives in the same care center.

Wickersham said he visits his mother-in-law -- who plays bingo and enjoys singing "You Are My Sunshine" -- nearly every day.

"You can put aside any of those typical mother-in-law jokes," Wickersham said. "When I visit her, I spend probably at least a half an hour with her on a daily basis that involves as much conversation as you'd share, the usual things, the weather."

A funeral Mass for Ray will occur at 11 a.m. Thursday at St. Sebastian Catholic Church in Madison. Interment will be later in the spring, in the Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, according to the obituary. Arrangements are by Giberson Funeral Home in Madison.

Erin Rhoda -- 474-9534

erhoda@centralmaine.com

Associated Press writer Nigel Duara in Iowa City contributed to this report.