BIOGRAPHY

Mack was born as Mary Penn in Terry, Mississippi, USA, on 2 April 1909, to parents Charlie Penn and Lula Rambert. As a girl, she picked cotton by hand on the family farm. She had three brothers and ten sisters. When she was 11 years old, her mother passed away.

In 1927, she married Isaac Penn. By the age of 36, she had given birth to eight children in Terry. In 1945, the family moved to Peoria, where her husband took a job with the East Peoria Caterpillar plant. The couple had four more children in Peoria, for a total of 12 children. They lived in a small home where they used the fireplace as a stove, and owned an ice box refrigerator made of wood, several feet high with one handle on the cabinet door. They would receive the ice delivery and put the huge block of ice wrapped in potato burlap bags, to help make it last longer. They would then put the food in to preserve it. They got their water from a natural spring or a well.

In September 1954, her husband died of a heart attack at work, and she was left to support their children on her own. She started an in-house day-care, charging $1 per child per day. She babysat over 50 children over several decades.

Mack passed away in Peoria, Illinois, USA, on 2 August 2019, at the age of 110 years, 122 days. She was survived by 10 children (six sons and four daughters), and an unspecified number of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. She was also survived by a younger sister, Ida B. Kelley of Jackson, Mississippi.

RECOGNITION

At the time of death, she was among the oldest living people in the U.S. state of Illinois.

ATTRIBUTION

* “Mary Penn Mack” – FindAGrave

* ““Momma” Mack Makes Everyone Feel Like Family By Molly Crusen Bishop” – The Traveler Weekly, 17 May 2018

* “Luciano: Mary Mack, possibly the oldest Peorian, dies at age 110” – Peoria Journal Star, 5 August 2019

GALLERY