World's Oldest Person Dies At 114

Yone Minagawa, a candy-loving great-great grandmother who became the world's oldest person earlier this year, has died at a nursing home in southwestern Japan, an official said Tuesday. She was 114.

The world's oldest person is now 114-year-old Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Ind. She was born on April 20, 1893, according to Guinness records.

Minagawa, who raised four sons and a daughter on her own by peddling flowers and vegetables, died Monday afternoon, said Toshiro Tachibana, an official at the nursing home in the former mining town of Fukuchi. The attending physician said Minagawa died of old age.

"Her appetite had been declining recently and her energy fading, so the family had asked us to make her as comfortable as possible. The death was not sudden," Tachibana said.

Born on Jan. 4, 1893, Minagawa was identified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's oldest person in January following the death of Emma Faust Tillman, also 114, in the United States.

Minagawa outlived all of her children except her daughter. She also had seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren, according to the nursing home.

Minagawa usually spent her days at the home resting, but seldom missed a weekly recreational sing-along, staff at the home said earlier this year. She had a sweet tooth and was particularly fond of Japanese cakes filled with sweet bean paste.

Parker lives at Shelbyville's Heritage House Convalescent Center about 25 miles southeast of Indianapolis. She was born in central Indiana's Morgan County, growing up on a farm before becoming a schoolteacher.

She taught in a two-room school in the Shelby County town of Smithland for several years until she wed her childhood sweetheart and next-door neighbor, Earl Parker, in 1911.

The same year, she graduated from Franklin College with a degree in education. But as was the tradition of that era, her teaching career ended with her marriage. She began the arduous life of a farm wife, preparing meals for as many as 12 men who worked on her husband's farm.

Parker, who had two sons, both of whom she has outlived. Her husband died in 1938.

The world's oldest man is also Japanese — Tomoji Tanabe, 111, born on Sept. 18, 1895. Tanabe lives in the southern city of Miyazaki, according to Guinness World Records.

Fukuchi is about 520 miles southwest of Tokyo.