America just turned 248 years old. Mary Payne Franklin has been alive nearly half that long.
Franklin, of Chestertown, is 111, although, to a reporter, she won’t admit it.
“I don’t tell my age,” she said coyly. Then, the onetime English teacher returned to business, pen in hand, her large-print puzzle book on the table nearby.
The woman folks call “Mom Mom” spends her days doing crosswords, watching TV game shows and polishing off meals of pizza or meatloaf or ice cream.
“Crab cakes, cantaloupe, spaghetti, doughnuts— there’s not much that this woman doesn’t like to eat,” said Beverly Emore, Franklin’s caretaker for 34 years. “Her heart rate is good, and her blood pressure is excellent. She hasn’t walked in five years, but one Advil a day is all she needs. Some nights, she lays awake and talks, but she answers herself, so that’s OK.”
Franklin is Maryland’s oldest resident, according to the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), a non-profit international firm that validates the ages of super-centenarians.
While the U.S. Census Bureau expects the number of people who reach 100 years or older to quadruple over the next 30 years, those living to age 110 or older — super-centenarians — are a more exclusive group.
The oldest living person in the world is Maria Branyas Morera, of Spain, who is 117. The oldest person to ever live was Jeanne Calment, of France, who was 122 when she died in 1997.
Elizabeth Frances, 114, of Houston, Texas, is the oldest living American. Vincent Dransfield, 110, who was verified as the oldest living man in the U.S., died June 26 in New Jersey. A 109-year-old, Eugene Baltes, of Illinois, will now take his place, according to GRG.
Franklin was born Mary Payne on Feb. 3, 1913. Then, the Great War was still a year off, the Dow Jones index reached 78 and George Herman Ruth, aka Babe, was 18 and playing sandlot ball at St. Mary’s Industrial School in Baltimore.
A native Alabaman, “Mary was sickly as a child and had a number of illnesses before the days of vaccinations, but she got through all that,” said her niece, Anne Spicknall, of Rockville.
The Paynes moved north and settled in Hyattsville, where their daughter attended Mount Ranier High School and then Wilson Teachers College, in Washington, both now gone. She married William Franklin, her childhood sweetie and an Army officer who later joined the foreign service. They lived in Japan, in the wake of World War II, and in Germany during the Berlin Crisis (1958-62).
The Franklins returned to Maryland and settled in Centreville in Queen Anne’s County, where they purchased The Wharf House, a historic Georgian-style home on the Corsica River that dates to 1771, five years before the start of American Revolution.
“My aunt did a lot of entertaining there, as hostess, when her husband worked for the State Department,” said Spicknall, 79. “She was an avid reader whose library of books reached from the floor to the ceiling.”
Widowed in 1985, Franklin moved soon after to a retirement community in Chestertown. Four years ago, during the coronavirus pandemic, she took up residence with her caretaker’s family, with round-the-clock support in a doting environment.
On turning 111, in February, Franklin shared a sheet cake with friends and family, who sang happy birthday, then paused as the supercentenarian took a deep breath.
“She managed to blow out one candle,” Spicknall said. “She enjoyed it for two hours, then said, ‘I’m tired; it’s time for you people to leave.’ ”
Longevity runs in Franklin’s family: her father lived to age 91; her mother, to 88, which was old for their generation.
Her mental acuity is the talk of the town. Hearing that Franklin was a baseball fan, the Orioles sent her a cap and jersey.
“Mary remembers things that the rest of us don’t,” said Emore, her caretaker. “Doing crosswords, she doesn’t cheat or look at the answers in the back of the book — it keeps her mind going. There’s not much that she can’t spell, and she’ll correct you if you’re wrong.
“She plays Scrabble with a social worker who comes each week. Once, she spelled a ‘bad’ word. It made our faces turn red, but not hers.”
Once a month, Franklin takes communion at home from the pastor of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Centreville, after which everyone sings, “You Are My Sunshine.”
God willing, she’ll go on awhile longer.
“I’m going to live to be 150,” she told her caretaker.
“Well, I won’t be here,” said Emore, 73. Franklin shrugged.
“Well, I’m sorry for you — but I will.”
