Supercentenarian Profile

Leonora Kontrimienė

Born:

1916-02-07

Buožėnai, Telšiai County

Lithuania

Current Residence:

Beržėnai, Šiauliai County

Lithuania

Leonora Kontrimienė is a Lithuanian supercentenarian and the country’s oldest known living resident.

BIOGRAPHY

Leonora Kontrimienė was born on 7 February 1916. She was the fourth of seven children—two sisters and five brothers—and grew up in a small farming household in the village of Buožėnai, Telšiai District. Her father owned nine hectares of land. Like most of the children in the family, Leonora completed only three grades of primary school; only the three youngest children went on to finish four. At the age of 13, she had to leave school and begin working for local farmers, herding cows. She rose early each morning to take them out to pasture and returned with them in the evening, after which the barn still had to be cleaned, the bedding shaken out, and the animals watered. A year later, she became a maid and took on additional farm work: feeding pigs, cooking, raking hay, and carrying out whatever tasks the owners assigned her.

At the age of 25, she married Dominykas Kontrimo, an older farmer from the same village of Buožėnai, who owned fifteen hectares of land. She and her husband raised livestock, keeping four cows and many sheep. After the Soviet government nationalized their property, the family—who were raising their daughter, Milda—was left with only one cow and fifty ares of land. They worked long hours on the collective farm, but the pay was minimal. As life in the countryside became increasingly difficult and it grew harder to support their daughter, Leonora took a job at the Mastis knitwear factory in Telšiai. Her husband remained in the village to work, while she cycled seven kilometers to the city each day and returned in the evening after her shift.

When her husband eventually grew tired of working with livestock in the village, they both settled in the city. Leonora worked as a printer at the factory, and when her eyesight began to worsen, she was reassigned to ironing finished products. She retired at the age of 55, although she wished to continue working, as her health was still good.

At 108, she remarked that she had no special secret to longevity—she simply worked hard and ate a varied diet. She also noted that long life seemed to run in the family, as her father’s sister lived to be 102. At 109, it was reported her only daughter was living in Sweden, and she also had two granddaughters and five great-grandchildren.