According to Lampe & Powers Funeral Home in Lake City, Bessie Laurena Hendricks died Tuesday at the Shady Oaks Care Center. Hendricks celebrated her 115th birthday at the home on Nov. 7 and was named the country’s oldest living person by the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group last year until her death.
Hendricks was born in 1907 in west-central Iowa’s Calhoun County and lived to see the Titanic sinking, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, and both the Spanish flu and Covid-19 pandemics. According to the Des Moines Register, she was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse and the mother of five children. Three of her children survive her.
On Saturday, Hendricks’ funeral will be held at Lampe & Powers Funeral Home.
According to the Gerontology Research Group, Hendrick’s death leaves California’s 114-year-old Edie Ceccarelli as the country’s oldest living person.