Downing Jett Kay

Date of birth: 23 November 1907
Age as of 27 August 2019: 111 years, 277 days

Downing Kay was born Downing Jett in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Her father was a clothier on West Fayette Street. She later moved to a house on Carlisle Avenue in Forest Park. Downing and her siblings would often dance along to their Victrola (a kind of gramophone). Downing graduated from Forest Park High School and Maryland State Normal School (now Towson University) and later became a schoolteacher. She married a man with the surname Kay and had an unreported number of children with him. When her younger child started school, she became a kindergarten teacher, and, eventually, head of the preschool, a position she held for 20 years.

Every morning until she was 100, she drank the juice of half a lemon mixed with warm water. She only stopped because she’d “lived to be 100, and thought that was long enough.” Downing remain mentally sharp as a centenarian, still playing Scrabble when she was almost 109. By this time, she had several grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
Country: USA
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