Two weeks ago, a woman who was part of my childhood passed away at the age of 100. Like so many people who are part of our childhoods, Barbara Grass eventually became someone I hadn’t seen in years. Not because anything happened. Life simply kept moving.

Some time ago, her name unexpectedly appeared in a Facebook friend request. We rarely interacted, but seeing her name always made me smile. It was a quiet reminder that a small but meaningful part of my childhood was still out there.

When I learned that Barbara had died, I didn’t find myself thinking about her age. I remembered being a kid in her Cape Cod home. I can still picture the paintings she created and the beautiful needlepoint that reflected her remarkable talent and eye for detail. She was headstrong, yet warm and welcoming. Most of all, I remembered how deeply she loved her family—especially her two sons, Stephen and Jon.

Her passing prompted the kind of reflection that comes when we’re suddenly reminded that our own lives are finite. Are we making the most of what we’ve been given? Are we spending enough of it with the people who matter most? What will those closest to us—or even a child who happened to cross our path—remember about us years from now?

As I began writing the next installment in Keystone Wayfarer’s Pennsylvania Women series, I found myself returning to those questions. And then I realized they were at the heart of Delphine’s story.

When Delphine Gibson died in 2018 at the age of 114, nearly every headline focused on the same remarkable fact: she had been the oldest person in the United States. It was an extraordinary distinction, but there was far more to Delphine Gibson than the number that made her famous.

Delphine Tucker entered the world on August 17, 1903, in Ridgeway, South Carolina, the second of eight children born to Elmore Tucker and Annie Diles. Like many Black children growing up during the Jim Crow era, Delphine learned early that every member of the household contributed. As a teenager, she worked on the family farm, helping provide for a household where even the simple task of putting food on the table demanded constant effort.

But the South Carolina farm where her story began was only the first chapter. At twenty-one, Delphine left behind the only life she had ever known, heading for High Point, North Carolina, in search of opportunities the rural South could not provide.

She rented a room on Loflin Street, found work, and eventually met Taylor Gibson. They married on January 27, 1928, and together began building a family. Their first son, Frank, arrived two years later.

Like so many American families of the era, the Gibsons built their lives through steady work. Taylor found employment at a veneer factory while Delphine worked first at the Fli-Back Company and later as a domestic worker. Together, the couple worked tirelessly to give their children opportunities they had not always had themselves.

Eventually, the search for a better future took Delphine north again.

In 1942, Taylor left North Carolina for Mount Union, Pennsylvania, where the area’s silica brick plants and refractory industry offered better-paying jobs than could be found in the South. His decision reflected a much larger story unfolding across America. Thousands of Black families were leaving the South in search of greater opportunity in northern communities, and Mount Union became one of those destinations.

Delphine, however, could not immediately make the same move. Her aging grandfather depended heavily on her, so she stayed in North Carolina to care for him. For the next ten years, she lived apart from Taylor while continuing to work and care for her family. Only in 1952, when she was 49 years old, was Delphine finally able to leave North Carolina and join her husband in Pennsylvania.

By then, she had already lived several very different lives: growing up on a South Carolina farm, leaving home as a young woman, marrying and raising children in North Carolina, and spending a decade separated from her husband while caring for her grandfather. Now, at an age when many people might have been settling into a familiar life, Delphine was beginning another chapter in Pennsylvania.

The Gibson family continued to grow with the births of Moody and Ella. Years passed as they do for most families. There were birthdays, Sunday services, school events, work, and countless ordinary moments that quietly became a lifetime. Through it all, Delphine’s faith remained a constant. It gave her strength as she raised her children and watched the world around her change in ways that would have been unimaginable when she was born in 1903.

But even the longest lives are not without heartbreak. On September 1, 1980, Taylor Gibson died at the age of 88. After more than fifty years together, Delphine faced the difficult task of moving forward without the man with whom she had built her life.

Around the same time, glaucoma gradually stole her eyesight. By 1982, she was completely blind. Yet the loss of her vision never diminished the faith that had guided her since childhood. Through hardship, migration, marriage, motherhood, and now widowhood, her church remained a constant source of strength.

In 2004, she moved into the Huntingdon Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, where she would spend the remainder of her life. It was there that people outside her family began to discover the remarkable woman quietly living among them.

Those who cared for Delphine remembered far more than her age. They remembered her gentle spirit, her sense of humor, and the hymns she loved to sing. In a 2017 television interview with WJAC, nursing home unit manager Miranda Glover described Delphine as having an “amazing spirit.” Asked about the secret to her longevity, her answer was remarkably simple: good food, faith in God, and her church.

Living beyond the age of 110 is so uncommon that those who reach it are known as supercentenarians, a distinction achieved by only a tiny fraction of people who celebrate their 100th birthday.

The longest verified human lifespan belongs to Jeanne Calment of France. Born in 1875, Calment lived to the astonishing age of 122 years and 164 days. She witnessed the rise of the automobile, two World Wars, the dawn of space exploration, and the arrival of the computer age. More than a quarter century after her death, her longevity record remains unmatched.

Before Delphine could officially join that rare group, her age first had to be verified. That responsibility fell to the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), an international organization dedicated to documenting and validating the world’s oldest people. For the GRG, reaching 110 is only the beginning of the investigation.

Researchers become historians as much as scientists. Birth certificates, census records, marriage licenses, death certificates, and other historical records are carefully assembled to create an unbroken paper trail. A single inconsistency can cast doubt on an extraordinary claim; a complete record can transform an incredible story into verified fact.

Delphine’s records withstood that scrutiny. In 2015, the GRG officially validated her age, confirming that the sharecropper’s daughter from Ridgeway, South Carolina, had become one of the world’s verified supercentenarians.

Following the death of Adele Dunlap of New Jersey in 2017, Delphine became the oldest living person in the United States. A few months later, she also became the oldest known person ever born in South Carolina—a remarkable distinction for a woman whose life had begun on a small farm in Ridgeway more than a century earlier.

When Delphine Gibson died on May 9, 2018, she was 114 years and 265 days old. The number tells us how long she lived. It cannot tell us what those years contained: a childhood on a South Carolina farm, the courage to leave home in search of opportunity, a marriage that lasted more than half a century, three children, decades of faith and hard work, the heartbreak of loss, and a spirit that continued to sing even after the world had grown dark and quiet around her.

As I say goodbye to Barbara, I think about those hot summer days at her Cape Cod home, when she would hand my brother and me dried corn to take down to her pond to feed the box turtles. I remember being that kid. It was a lifetime ago, and yet it feels like yesterday.

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As this story is published, the oldest living person in the world is Ethel Caterham of England. Born in 1909, she is 116 years old. She will celebrate her 117th birthday on August 21.

The second-oldest living person is Naomi Whitehead of the United States. Born in 1910, she is expected to celebrate her 116th birthday on September 26.