Clara Willard

BIOGRAPHY

Willard was born as Clara Emily Harrison in Norfolk, Nebraska, on 2 December 1872 as the daughter of John Jesse Harrison and Diana Fanny Munson. She had a brother named George. The family regularly traversed across many states, living in Iowa and Illinois, where Willard worked as a piano teacher for many years.

Willard was married thrice. She married her first husband, Walter H. Bishop, on 6 September 1890 in Chicago, with whom she had her two daughters, Diana and Helen. Diana died in 1911, and Walter followed four years later. Willard also outlived her younger daughter.

Following her first husband’s death, Willard moved in with Elmer and Pauline Spreeberg in Oak Park, Illinois. After Pauline died in 1920, Willard married Elmer, who died later that decade. In the 1940s she married Everett Willard, 23 years her junior, and was widowed for a third time in 1969. In 1974, Willard moved into a nursing home in Plainwell, Michigan.

As a centenarian, Willard was reported by nursing home staff to be highly independent, insisting on doing as much as she could herself. She also enjoyed reminiscing about her childhood. Due to deteriorating eyesight, she could no longer partake in her hobby of reading poetry. She was bedridden from the age of 106.

Willard died in Plainwell, Michigan, on 13 March 1984 at the age of 111 years, 102 days. She was survived by her two stepchildren, Warren Willard and Doris Huber, and their descendants.

RECOGNITION

It is unclear when Willard became Michigan’s oldest resident, but it is known that she was succeeded by Annie Cawthorne, then 109. She surpassed the age of Nellie Cline (1863 – 1975) in early 1984 to become the state’s oldest person ever, a record which lasted for five years before being broken by Ellen Thomas, who later lived to 113.

Willard’s age was validated by the GRG on an unknown date.

ATTRIBUTION

• The Kalamazoo Gazette

GALLERY

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