Alvina Redd
Alvina Heather Redd | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 30 August 1906 |
| Nationality | Esthursian (Osynstric) |
| Spouse(s) | Bernedh Azhan (m. 1929; died 1980) |
| Children | 3 (2 deceased) |
Alvina Redd (born 30 August, 1906) is an Esthursian supercentenarian who, at the age of 118 years, 87 days, is among the oldest living people in the world. Redd has been the oldest Esthursian living person since 4 May, 2021, when previous oldest Esthursian Ethel Ingham died aged 116; Redd has since become the third-oldest Esthursian to be recorded.
Personal life
Redd was born in the southern upland city of Somberbridge, to lower middle class parents; Edgard Carl (1881-1923) worked as a steelworker, while Eldgyna Jane (1881-1969) worked as a domestic servant for a local manor house. Redd moved from Somberbridge to the inner suburbs of Weskerby with her family in 1911, as her parents sought out better paying work; her mother was accepted for a scholarship in the Free Lorestead of Meresby (FLM) the same year to study Linguistics, and her father became a miner in the region's coal mines. Eldgyna, Redd's mother, soon became a translator for elderly Ezhoneg families unable to understand Atlish, particularly for legal instructions.
Having passed her Firsts to enter a selective state school, she joined the Girls' Ilwick School (now Ilwick Grammar), and gained an interest in language like her mother. Her father died in a mining accident during the Troubled Twenties when she was just seventeen, and the harsh economic climate on the onset of the Scalvian War left her family suddenly on the brink of poverty; nevertheless, Redd passed her Afters (now Furthers) and got her place at the Lorestead of Rennezh to study advanced-level Ezhoneg.
Redd lived the rest of the 20th century in Rennezh; marrying her university confidante Bernedh Azhan in 1929, she moved to the inner city to be closer to her work, and was employed by several corporations for translating - and eventually the Lorestead of Rennezh itself as a tutor and lecturer.
She joined in protests against the government numerous times; in the 1950s Redd spoke at the Rennezh Senedd to call for the local government to censure the national government's ultranationalism, and in a 2021 interview stated the secret to her longevity was "having fire in her bones."
Retiring in 1970, Redd took up chess and studied Ezhoneg history, becoming fluent in Merthian as well as Ezhoneg - one of just a few thousand who had fluency in Merthian at the time - and travelled routinely across Esthursia. Her husband died in 1980, and ten years after he died, she returned back to her maiden name. Redd dated again after this, however stopped in the late 1990s. After a fall in 1998, Redd moved to a care home in Devesgar, south Ezhonyth.
Redd is agnostic, and exercised routinely into her 100s. Redd is now partially deaf and visually impaired, but not bedridden, and completed a walk around her care home garden in 2022 for charity. Redd was one of the twenty supercenturian campaigners for social care in 2016; the government instituted a subsidised elder care service gradually between 2017 and 2021.
Longevity and health
Redd's grandparents had an average life expectancy of 90 despite living through the 19th century; her mother died at 88 in 1969. Her eldest two of three children have predeceased her, at the ages of 72 (2002) and 84 (2016) respectively; her surviving youngest son, Rickard, is now 88. Redd suffered a fall in 1998, and pneumonia twice in 2004 and 2011, and has had to undergo a heart operation in 2013, after which her mobility was significantly reduced. Until this time, Redd had been an active member of her care home, moving and acting "like someone fifteen years younger than her" according to the matron in 2019; she remains relatively active to "stave off bed sores".
Redd accredits her exceptional lifespan to "stubbornness, cynicism and fruit", and claims dark chocolate - of which she has regularly - is the secret to looking and feeling "a decade or two younger". Redd has decried "fast food eating" and claims she has not had a single fast food meal since 1994, and also that junk eating contributed to her husband's death from heart disease.