World's Oldest Person Dies!!!

Although she liked her bacon crispy and her chicken fried, she never drank, smoked or fooled around, Gertrude Baines once said, describing a life that lasted an astonishing 115 years and earned her the title of oldest person on the planet. It was a title Baines quietly relinquished Friday when she died in her sleep at Western Convalescent Hospital, her home since she gave up living alone at age 107 after breaking a hip. She likely suffered a heart attack, said her longtime physician, Dr. Charles Witt, although an autopsy was scheduled to determine the exact cause of death.Baines was born in Shellman, Ga., on April 6, 1894, when Grover Cleveland was in the White House, radio communication was just being developed and television was still more than a half-century from becoming a ubiquitous household presence.

Throughout it all, Baines said last year, it was a life she thoroughly enjoyed.

"I'm glad I'm here. I don't care if I live a hundred more," she said with a hearty laugh after casting her vote for Barack Obama for president. "I enjoy nothing but eating and sleeping."

Her vote for Obama, she added, had helped fulfill a lifelong dream of seeing a black man elected president.

"We all the same, only our skin is dark and theirs is white," said Baines, who was black.

The centenarian, who worked as a maid at Ohio State University dormitories until her retirement, had outlived all of her family members. Her only daughter died of typhoid at age 18. In her final years, she passed her days watching her favorite TV program, "The Jerry Springer Show," and consuming her favorite foods: bacon, fried chicken and ice cream.

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