Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Fred Guarino

The Lowndes Signal

According to media reports, Susannah (Susie) Mushatt Jones, the world’s oldest person,  died in New York at age 116, Thursday night.

Jones reportedly, died Thursday night at a public housing facility for seniors in Brooklyn after a brief illness.

In 2015 she was recognized as the world’s oldest person with the rare distinction of being one of only two living people born in the 1800s, alongside Italian woman Emma Morano.

“Eating… sleeping… being nice to people.”

That was the secret to to a long life Mushatt-Jones, a native of Lowndes County, Ala., told the Signal following the celebration of of 112th birthday in 2011.

That year “Miss Susie,” as she is known, was believed to be the “oldest living New Yorker,” according to the Congressional Record of the United States of America.

United States Rep. Edolphus Towns rose on July 19 to recognize the accomplishment by the third of 11 children born in Lowndes County, Ala on July 6, 1899.

Towns said, “Being raised in the segregated South, Miss Susie developed a warm and kind heart from the love her mother and father expressed. Throughout her life she has been led by a basic principle of giving all that she has, while living an upbeat life.”

According to her niece, Margie Mushatt McDonald of Montgomery, Miss Susie was the daughter of Callie and Mary Mushatt, the third oldest child and oldest girl of five boys and six girls born in what was the Calhoun Community at that time.

She graduated from The Calhoun High School and later moved to New York.

She moved back to Alabama in about 1970 where she remained for about seven years before moving back to New York.

Also 2011, when contacted by the Signal at her home in New York for comment, Miss Susie asked, “You’re in Alabama?”

When the answer was yes, ma’am, she said, “I think I’ll come on down… that’s where I was raised.”

Another reason for such a long life, McDonald said her aunt gives, is to, “Just believe in the Lord.”

In 2015 Jones also attributed her longevity to a strict diet of four strips of bacon for breakfast each morning alongside a serving of eggs and grits.

She also said she never smoked nor consumed alcohol and slept 10 hours per day.

While Miss Susie never had children of her own, she sent a lot of the children in her family to college, McDonald said.