Oldest American, Goldie Michelson, dies at home at age 113

WORCESTER, Mass. – The oldest American person has died at her Massachusetts home at age 113. Goldie Michelson was a month short of her 114th birthday.

Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group senior consultant Robert Young says Michelson died Friday. He says she’d been “very frail and confined to bed” and hadn’t been seen in public for a long time.

Michelson was born in Elizabethgrad, Russia, in 1902 and moved to the United States when she was a child. She lived in Worcester (WUS’-tur), 50 miles west of Boston.

The Callahan Fay & Caswell Funeral Home says Michelson graduated from Brown University. It says she had a lifelong interest in theatre and even installed stage lights in her basement so children could perform there.

Young says the new oldest American is New Jersey resident Adele Dunlap, who’s also 113.