André Boite

BIOGRAPHY

Boite was born in Argent-sur-Sauldre, a commune in Centre-Val de Loire’s department of Cher, on 6 December 1910 to a travelling salesman father and a chambermaid mother.

Boite worked as a painter and decorator in Paris after studying fine arts there. He aided in the restoration of several valuable paintings.

During World War II, Boite enlisted in the French corps, and was deported to Bavaria after being taken prisoner. In 1951, he married Yvette Torrens on his 41st birthday in Bougarez, Algeria. The couple had three children, two sons – one of whom died in 2017 – and a daughter.

In the 1960s, Boite moved to Nice and worked in the tourism industry from 1966 until his retirement in 2001, being the director of the tourist office in Villefranche-sur-Mer. His wife died of Alzheimer’s in 2017 aged 95.

Boite drove until the age of 99, and could still walk with a walker aged 108. He became the oldest living man in France following the 15 December 2021 death of Marcel Meys, and Europe’s oldest living man upon the death of 111-year-old Stanisław Kowalski of Poland on 5 April 2022.

Boite died at his home in Nice at 2 p. m. on 15 July 2022 at the age of 111 years, 221 days, having reportedly been tired for some time. He was survived by his two daughters, his grandchildren, and three great-grandsons. He was the fourth-oldest French man of all time after Jules Théobald, Meys, and Maurice Floquet.