Biography
Besseling-Levers was born as Johanna Maria Levers in the small town of Zwillbrock, Germany, located very close to the Dutch border, as the daughter of Bernard Heinrich Levers and Maria Katharina te Woorst. Her father was a butcher.
On 9 November 1932, Besseling-Levers married her husband, Johannes Hendrikus “Hein” Besseling, in Groenlo, Gelderland. She was widowed on 9 October 1969 after almost 37 years of marriage, and later moved to Ruurlo, a town also located in Gelderland.
Besseling-Levers died in Ruurlo on 14 September 2019 at the age of 110 years, 34 days. She was the fifth-oldest person in the Netherlands.