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At 107, woman credits exercise for longevity
Benson just reached 107, nearly half the age of the United States. Friends and family celebrated her birthday on Wednesday at the Camarillo Community Center. "She's lived a very good life," her daughter Bonnie Lowe said. Probably the county's only 107-year-old resident, Benson is nearly deaf and has failing eyesight but is otherwise in good health, her family said. The only time she was admitted to the hospital was a couple of years ago when she suffered a mild stroke, Lowe said.
Lowe agrees, adding that her mother also has eaten the right foods and never smoked. "She took care of her body and never abused it," Lowe said. "I think all those things certainly entered into her long life, plus her disposition- she was happy." Professor Elizabeth Zelinski of USC's Davis School of Gerontology said gerontologists suspect a combination of good genes and a healthy lifestyle early in life account for longevity. "Beyond that we really don't know," she said. Zelinski said it's very rare for someone to live to the age of 100, much less beyond that, since only 3 percent of the U.S. population lives past 85. Benson has exercised all her life and continued the daily habit when she and Lowe moved here from Los Angeles four years ago. Benson joins other seniors in an exercise class every weekday at the community center. Except for minimum assistance- Benson uses a walker and needs some help getting out of chairs- the centenarian gets around under her own steam. Although her fading eyesight has forced her to give up reading, one of her favorite pastimes, she enjoys spending time in the garden and a stiff game of Hand and Foot, a card game similar to canasta that can last as long as three hours. Lowe said the counting that's involved in the game is good mental stimulation for her mother. And it seems Benson is always up for a card game. Lowe's son, 52year-old Steven Buchan, lives with them and said he's played so often with his grandmother that he's "burned out." Benson was born in rural South Dakota, the second of 10 children. She grew up on a farm at a time when horses and buggies dominated the traffic landscape. The family had no indoor toilet; a water pump on the kitchen counter served as the faucet and wood fueled the iron stove. True to the experts' theories, Benson's family has a history of longevity. Her mother lived to the age of 96 and her grandmother to 101. She has one surviving sibling, an 87yearold sister, who lives in the Los Angeles area. Lowe said her mother worked her way through college and that inspired her to pursue higher education. Benson moved to Los Angeles at the age of 25, and worked as a teacher until she married Charles Benson. They raised four children together. When Charles became ill in the 1950s and couldn't work, Lorena returned to teaching to help support them and their two children still living at home. She retired in the early 1960s. Charles died in 1952; they'd been married for 26 years. Granddaughter Karen Cooper, 50, said Lorena was an attentive grandmother who created beautiful needlework and once helped her knit an entire dress. "She missed that, when she could no longer use her hands," Cooper said. Cooper, herself a grandmother, lives in Washington state, but flew in to attend Benson's birthday party. The family said Benson has always had a pleasant disposition- never complaining or demanding. "She's just an easy person to live with," Lowe said. Benson doesn't do much talking these days because of her hearing loss, but Cooper said her dry, subtle sense of humor remains intact. At her 100th birthday in 2000- with five generations present- she announced she would live to be 105. Asked last week how long she thinks she'll live, Benson replied, "Who knows. Do you know how long you're going to live?" Then she paused and added, "forever."
"She didn't get to be 107 without being spunky," Cooper said. |
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