Oldest American, Goldie Michelson, dead at 113

The oldest American person has died at her Massachusetts home at age 113.

Goldie Michelson, who was Jewish, was a month short of her 114th birthday.

Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group senior consultant Robert Young said Michelson died Friday. He said she had been “very frail and confined to bed” and hadn’t been seen in public for a long time.

Young said the new oldest American is New Jersey resident Adele Dunlap, who’s also 113.

Born to Jewish parents in Russia in 1902, Michelson immigrated to the US at age 2. Apart from her time as an infant in Russia and a stint as an undergrad at Pembroke College — a women’s college in Providence, Rhode Island, that merged into Brown University in 1971 — Michelson has lived her entire life in her adopted hometown of Worcester.

Michelson had a lifelong passion for theater, which she taught to Hebrew school students at Worcester’s Temple Emanuel (now Temple Emanuel Sinai), Jewish senior citizens and others for decades. She had a small theater in the basement of her home, complete with a stage, footlights and a dressing room, which doubled as a laundry room. When Michelson left generous funding for future renovations to the local theater at Clark University in her will, the school naturally renamed it the Michelson Theater.

Michelson completed a master’s degree at Clark University in sociology, and her thesis focused on a community that few probably know better than she does: the Jews of Worcester. In “A Citizenship Survey of Worcester Jewry,” Goldie found that many of the city’s Jewish immigrants were intimidated by the task of learning English and didn’t pursue American citizenship.

After the borders of the Soviet Union opened up for Jews in 1989, a new wave of Jewish immigrants came to Worcester. Michelson was among the volunteers to help them settle in and accustom themselves to American society.

“You think of a women’s organization, and I was directing it,” she told the Worcester Telegram in 2012.

Michelson also maintained that walking four to five miles a day was the secret to her longevity.

“One of the great joys of life was when I sold my car,” she told Clark University’s magazine in 2012.

When she became a supercentenarian — joining those who have lived to the age of 110 — she received a photograph and letter from US President Barack Obama. Even though she knew he would probably never read it, Michelson was adamant about writing the commander in chief a thank you note, Minsky remembers.

“I just feel I’d like to do it,” Goldie said after hitting the milestone three years ago. “I want to tell him I voted for him.”