Making Sense of Centenarians

Genes and lifestyle help people live through a century

My great-grandmother was born in 1897. She did most of her cooking on a wood-burning stove in her farmhouse in Cable, Wis. When I knew her, she slept on a cotton mattress that she had made herself in the 1940s and kept handmade lace doilies on the arms of all the chairs and sofas.