Oldest Oregonian dies in Creswell

CRESWELL — She lived in three different centuries and celebrated more birthdays than most human beings who ever lived. But just like the rest of us, Delma Kollar, the oldest known Oregonian, who was thought by official record-keepers to be the world’s fourth-oldest person, proved to be mortal after all. She died Tuesday morning at the Creswell Health and Rehabilitation Center at the age of 114. Or was it 113?

“We’ll never know for sure,” her granddaughter, Syd Bergeson of Eugene, said Tuesday.

According to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, which verifies the ages of supercentenarians (110 or older) worldwide for the Guinness Book of World Records, Kollar was born on Oct. 31, 1897.

Kollar’s family says she wasn’t issued a birth certificate until the 1950s. Family members say she was born Delma Dorothie Lowman on Oct. 31, 1898, in Lone Elm, Kan. But based on 1900 and 1910 census records found online a few years ago by Gerontology Research Group analyst Robert Young, the group listed her birthday as 1897. Its website still had her as the fourth-oldest person in the world as of Tuesday, behind two other women born in 1897, and the world’s oldest known person, 115-year-old Besse Cooper of Monroe, Ga.

Even if Kollar was born in 1898, she would have still been among the top 10 oldest living people before she died at 6:05 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Gerontology Research Group. And a Wikipedia list online of the oldest people ever had Kollar listed as tied for 75th on Tuesday. The oldest known person ever was France’s Jeanne Calment, who was 122 when she died in 1997.

“She lived a fantastically long life,” said Bergeson, who was holding her grandmother’s hand when she passed away.

“We are very fortunate. We don’t have any regrets, and that’s a great feeling.”

A schoolteacher in Kansas and California before moving to Oregon in 1982 with her second husband, Harry Kollar, Delma Kollar outlived both her husbands (her first husband and college sweetheart, Earl Hoggatt, died in 1966) and two of her three children. She had six grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren, 11 great-great-grandchildren and one great-great-great-grandchild.

Jean Cooper, 87, of Cottage Grove, is Kollar’s lone surviving child. Her other two children, Bill Hoggatt and Earlene Duncan, died in their 60s, he of congestive heart failure, she of a brain tumor. Kollar’s parents both lived into their 90s, and she had two aunts who lived past 100, according to a family history that Kollar put together years ago.

Kollar’s family marveled at her longevity. Each time her Halloween birthday came and went after she turned 100, they figured that would be it. But then they would find themselves back in her room at the Creswell assisted-living facility, celebrating with yet another cake each year.

Although Kollar’s faculties had diminished considerably in the past couple of years, her family thought they might very well be celebrating another birthday come this fall — one that would include some “No. 1” foam fingers as their beloved matriarch found herself passing the three ladies in front of her some time this year, earning a Wikipedia page update that said: “World’s Oldest Living Person.”

But on Sunday, the facility called to say that Kollar’s blood pressure had dropped significantly. Bergeson spent her grandmother’s final two nights with her. She held her hand and sang some of Kollar’s favorite songs.

“For a long time, I wanted to be with her when she went,” Bergeson said. “You never know if you’ll be able to do that.”

Shortly before she died, Kollar “opened her eyes really big,” said Bergeson, who was there with four aides when the moment came. “And she looked really good for a few moments. It was kind of a sweet moment. Then she just passed.”

Since daughter Cooper has never been convinced that her mother was born in 1897, Kollar’s grave marker will say she was born in 1898, Bergeson said. But the obituary filled out at Smith-Lund-Mills Funeral Home in Cottage Grove will say 1897, she said.

A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday at McKenzie Valley Presbyterian Church in Walterville, where Kollar lived for almost 20 years after moving from California.