KEANmag
43
Oldest
American
alumni news
The oldest living American citizen, 113-year-old Adele Henderson
Dunlap, is a Kean University alumna. Mrs. Dunlap graduated from Kean’s
predecessor, the Newark Normal School, in 1923, with a Bachelor of Arts
in Elementary Education.
She was born in Newark on December 12, 1902, when Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid were still robbing trains in the old west, President
Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt had taken a major leap into the modern
era as the first president to ride in an automobile, and the teddy bear,
named after him, had just been introduced to the world. But Dunlap
doesn’t see anything extraordinary about her life’s journey.
“I haven’t done anything special,” she said during a recent visit from
Kean students and Kean Director of Alumni Relations Stella Maher to the
New Jersey care center where she lives.
Maher presented Dunlap with Kean memorabilia, including an alumni
medallion and a framed letter. The letter read, in part, “Warmest
congratulations to you on capturing a singular title that is reserved for
the remarkable person in the United States who has lived the longest
and has witnessed more history than anyone – oldest American. It is
with abiding respect that we honor you.”
While Dunlap may see her life as ordinary, in truth the things she
experienced, and things that she did, over the course of her life, were
anything but. She was a feminist pioneer, pursuing a degree in higher
education at a time when women had only just received the right to
vote, and were still fighting hard for greater access to education. She
taught third grade for five years in Kearny before marrying and starting
a family. Her 86-year-old son Earl recalls his mom talking about her time
in the classroom.
“She would tell us about some of the kids who misbehaved in her class
and how she dealt with them,” he said. “She was always after us to do
better in school.”
At a loss to explain his mother’s longevity, Earl Dunlap says she smoked
for years until his father’s heart attack, ate what she wanted and
exercised only rarely in her younger years. It may be that the key to a
long life lies more in one’s spirit than in their routine; “She didn’t really
work at becoming the oldest American,” her son explains, because, as
many extraordinary things do, “It just happened.”
Kean Alumna Adele Henderson Dunlap
