Brooklyn’s own Susannah Mushatt Jones has officially been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest living human.
Jones, known as “Miss Susie” to friends, and “Tee” to family, celebrated her 116th birthday, Tuesday morning, at the Vandalia Senior Center, 47 Vandalia Ave in East New York, where she resides.
Jones was born to sharecroppers in Alabama, on July 6, 1899. At that time, William McKinley was President of the United States. She graduated high school and was accepted in to college, however, her family could not afford it. In 1923, she became a nanny after moving to the place she would call home for the rest of her life, New York.
Jones has outlived her 10 siblings, takes minimal medication and is mobile via wheelchair.
She has over 100 nieces, nephews and great nieces and nephews. Nia Mays, one of Jones’ great nieces, was actually born exactly 16 years ago, on Jones’ 100th birthday.
She has been blind since the age of 100 and has become partially deaf. But Jones always credits her long life to never drinking or smoking. “Tee doesn’t have kids and she was only married once, for a short time,” added Mays.
She was generous with her family, putting one of her nieces through college. But when it came to herself, the only weakness she had was high-end lace lingerie, reported TIME. “She would save her money and then go to Bloomingdale’s,’” said her niece Selbra Mushatt. “One time, when she had to get an EKG, the doctors and nurses were surprised to see her wearing that lingerie, and she said, ‘Oh sure, you can never get too old to wear fancy stuff.’”
Other vices: bacon every morning and a pack of gum a day!
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams attended the super-sweet-16 and recognized Jones’ 30 years worth of tenant patrol. “She beat me,” he joked. It was a responsibility she felt was important, going not just everyday, but twice a day.
Lecettie Simpson, one of Jones’ nieces, finds it simply amazing that Jones has lived to see three decades. “Look at the changes she has seen. Could you imagine what it must be like for her,” Simpson said. “It’s a legacy.”
