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Oldest person in Ohio dies

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Sylvia Booker Utz, born March 9, 1899, talks in her room at the Brethren Retirement Community in Greenville. Utz died Monday, Oct. 5. She was 110.

Staff photo by Jim Witmer Sylvia Booker Utz, born March 9, 1899, talks in her room at the Brethren Retirement Community in Greenville. Utz died Monday, Oct. 5. She was 110.

By Lou Grieco, Staff Writer Updated 4:17 PM Monday, October 5, 2009

GREENVILLE — Sylvia Booker Utz, one of the Miami Valley’s last living links to the 19th century and the oldest person in Ohio, died Monday, Oct. 5. She was 110.

“We’ve been expecting it,” said Utz’s daughter, Doris Jean Brown of Phoenix, Ariz. “She’d been unresponsive for a week. She probably just slipped away.”

Brown, who is 88, said she visited her mother the last two weeks of August. “Her mind was still sharp,” Brown said.

Utz, who lived at the Brethren Retirement Community, was born March 9, 1899, in Darke County’s Franklin Twp., Utz married Harley Utz on June 15, 1918, before World War I ended. Their marriage lasted 83 years, a Guinness world record, until his death in November 2001 at age 103.

For the past six months, Utz was a member of an elite group: supercentenarians — people who are 110 years old. Only 89 people alive worldwide have been verified as such, the Gerontology Research Group said in March.

Utz became the state’s oldest person after Ethel Johnson, 111, of Upper Sandusky, died July 29, according to the GRG. The world’s oldest person is currently Kama Chinen, 114, of Japan, though there are a five others who were born later in 1895 than Chinen’s birthday of May 10.

Utz neither smoked nor drank alcohol. She worked hard while growing up on a Darke County farm, milking cows and hoeing weeds. At the time of her last birthday, she still walked to the retirement home’s dining room for supper with only the assistance of a walker.

Oddly, neither of her parents lived particularly long. Sylvia helped her father care for her mother, Clara, who died in 1917 of tuberculosis at age 53. Her father, Benjamin Franklin Booker, died at the age of 79.

Her siblings, however, have all lived longer than her parents — in some cases, much, much longer. Her oldest sister, Delcie Cress, died at age 109 in 1998. Another sister lived to be 94. Her two brothers survived into their 80s.

She had three children, two of whom are living: Brown and Harley Utz, 86, who lives in Nevada. She also had five grandchildren, three of whom are living; seven great-grandchildren; and seven great-great-grandchildren.

Brown, who is closing in on 89, said her mother didn’t consider that age to be old.

“She said that many a time,” Brown said. “You’re just a kid.”

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