Do you feel old?
The world’s second oldest person, and Europe’s oldest, Lucile Randon, who took the name of Sister André when she became a nun in 1944, has survived Covid-19.
She was born in Alès on February 11, 1904.
How long ago was that?
The world population was less than 1.7 billion people. It was well before World War I broke out, which was still over a decade away. Britain and Germany were generally regarded as the dominant powers in the world, and they were heading towards war. Jazz was still a recent invention, and no one had yet heard of rock ‘n roll. Cars were still a rarity, and exclusively for elites. The Eiffel Tower was barely a decade and a half old, and was far ad away the tallest man-made structure in the world, and would remain so for decades to come. Nobody had heard of the Titanic yet. The modern Olympic games were less than a decade old, and the FIFA World Cup was still decades away from coming into existence. Here in the United States, there were still five modern states – Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii – which had not yet gotten statehood. No country had ever officially endured either communism and capitalism. Just months earlier, the Wright Brothers had just succeeded in building the first airplane to successfully fly. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was still on tour and doing well.
Obviously, the world was a different place. She was around to see a lot.
She was born during France’s Belle Époque, saw World War I break out, and saw it end, survived the Spanish Flu in 1918 and 1919, lived through the Great Depression, saw World War II begin and end, living through the German occupation, saw the end of France’s colonial era, saw the beginning and end of the Cold War, lived to see another century and millennium be ushered in, and now, she is still going strong in 2021, in the age of the Covid-19 crisis. She got the virus, and managed to survive to see her 117 birthday!
Do you still feel old?
She survived Covid, and said that she was not afraid to die:
When asked by French broadcaster BFM if she was scared of having Covid, Sister Andre said: "No, I wasn't scared, because I wasn't scared to die.
"I'm happy to be with you, but I would wish to be somewhere else - to join my big brother, and my grandfather and my grandmother."
Sister André is blind, and is in a wheelchair.
Still, she was around through all of those times, witnessed so much of history over the course of so many decades. Hell, she even saw the vast majority of the 20th century, and has now seen a pretty sizable portion of the 21st century, to boot.
Unbelievable.
Below are the links to the two articles used in writing this particular blog entry, and I got the quote used above in particular from the BBC article. Take a look:
Europe's oldest person survives Covid just before 117th birthday by BBC News,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56005488
World’s Second-Oldest Person Recovers From Covid-19 in Time for 117th Birthday by Isis Davis-Marks, February 11, 2021
Sister André, a French nun born in 1904, self-isolated but didn’t experience any symptoms of the virus
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