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02/06/2004: "Survivor"

Adella Wotherspoon died the other day. She was 100 years old. She lived most of her life, I guess, a couple of miles from here, in Watchung. Her father died in 1910, when she was six or so, and her mother moved with her out to New Jersey from New York. She graduated from Plainfield High School in 1921. She taught school for a year. She married a furniture salesman. He died in 1982; they had no children. I hope it was a full life; set down it looks like the kind of gentle but meaningful life so many people live. But here's the thing: she was a survivor of the General Slocum disaster. When she was a baby, her family was among the 1300 church member who went on a boat trip to a church picnic. The boat caught fire en route and over 1000 people died. Adella was the youngest survivor. In the end, she outlived the rest of them, from the youngest to the oldest to the only.