Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/28/maine-lobster-lady-dies-aged-105

by NaOH • 6 months ago

235 60 6 months ago

havaloc• 6 months ago

It always seems it's a fall that ends it, I wonder if she could have made 100 years on the water if she hadn't fell. What an inspiring life!

Aeolun• 6 months ago

It’s not the fall. It’s the enforced idleness afterwards.

interloxia2• 6 months ago

I sometimes wonder if VR is ever successful, perhaps in the 2050s, some of the idleness will be less of an issue.

The lack of movement rather than rich stimulation might remain the issuem I look forward to a study if there hasn't been one yet.

bell-cot3• 6 months ago

Old family wisdom - "People fall at every age. But getting back up gets harder every year, and the time comes when you can't."

hackeraccount• 6 months ago

Yeah. My Grandmother lived a pretty long time but she had a boarder named Lillian who at 95 was still walking 2 or 3 miles to the store every day. One day her daughter gave her a lift and managed to get into a fairly minor accident. (My Dad claimed that the daughter was herself too old to be driving.)

Anyhow Lillian broke an ankle. Went to hospital. And there was some complication. And then another. And 2 weeks later she's passed away, never having gotten out of the hospital.

I think people - especially when you're old - are more like sharks then not. If you don't keep moving nothing good happens.

somenameforme• 6 months ago

It's the senescence that makes the fall, more or less, inevitable. Warren Buffet wrote about it in his final letter to shareholders [1] : "When balance, sight, hearing and memory are all on a persistently downward slope, you know Father Time is in the neighborhood."

[1] https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/news/nov1025.pdf

avadodin• 6 months ago

had to check. glad he's still among us as far as i can tell.

dayyan• 6 months ago

Rugged individualism. Rest in peace, Queen.

dostick• 6 months ago

Who else reading the headline thought it’s about 100 year old lobster that died?

innis226• 6 months ago

Lol me too

GuestFAUniverse• 6 months ago

So Long, and Thanks for All the... Lobster.

Ronsenshi• 6 months ago

She must have had so many interesting stories to tell. Such an amazing experiences - born in the early 1920s, being a young adult at the beginning of the Second World War, seeing mass commercialization of air travel, flight to space, miniaturization and age of information. And she even caught beginnings of AI (or pseudo-AI).

She "picked" a good place to live and observe the flow of time and events where she directly wouldn't be affected by various negative events throughout the century of her life.

julian_t• 6 months ago

Some people lived through amazing change. My grandmother was born in the late 1890s in rural Wales, and died at 95. She remembered electricity coming to her village and the visit of the first motor car, the arrival of radio and telephones. She saw men land on the moon and towards the end of her life went to the USA on a 747. Yet when she was a girl she lived with older farm workers who had never been more than ten miles from where they were born.

frereubu• 6 months ago

When my family moved to Somerset from London in the 1970s our elderly next-door neighbour, after hearing we'd moved from London, said "I went to Bristol [25 miles away] once. Didn't like it much." Apart from that he'd stayed in the town we'd moved to. I think about that a lot and sometimes envy his contentment in staying where he was - he had everything he needed.

delichon• 6 months ago

My grandfather was born in the 1890s. He watched the first moon landing with us. He had tears in his eyes and said "when I was a boy I carried flint and steel to start a fire".

jagged-chisel• 6 months ago

I’m generation X. My grandmother will be 97 in March. Her memory is actually really good. She gets frustrated when she’s talking about family and doesn’t recall a specific name of a great- or great-great-grandchild (With five generations alive at the same time, that’s a lot of names. I call my kids and my granddaughter the wrong name all the time - ah the human condition), but her mind is doing well.

Many times, I have mentioned how things have changed in the last century, how most of the things we make use of now were developed and refined in the last 100 years - industrial machinery, communications, computers …

There’s a simpleness to her experience. She is most definitely a beneficiary of society. She has lived comfortably without the need to understand how everything works; and hasn’t had the curiosity to question.

I’m not sure I have a point, but I do personally find it a little disappointing to have someone who lived through so much without having the ability to discuss it at depth.

inglor_cz• 6 months ago

I wonder if there is a lobster that survived her.

Lobsters are long-lived, they don't age (in the sense of slowly losing their fitness - senescence) and they only die when they grow too big and suffocate during moulting, or possibly catch some infection, or get killed by other animals/people.

A 105 y.o. lobster is plausible.

nephihaha4• 6 months ago

Early reports by European colonists in New England suggest some of the lobsters back then were far bigger than today.

linksnapzz• 6 months ago

My grandpa said that it was not unusual to see 5-10pounders crawling around in the shallows at night...in the 1920s, in Narragansett Bay, not even offshore.

Gracana• 6 months ago

I went looking for information on the oldest known lobster, and found this article about a 20lb lobster named George who was estimated to be 140 years old. Neat!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_(lobster)

ulf-77723• 6 months ago

The article states that a raising amount of people in the US still work, albeit their age and it feels a little strange to me. Ginny, probably got so old because she was working and had a purpose every day. Being 100 and still capable of working is a blessing

bell-cot3• 6 months ago

Being 100 and still capable of working is a blessing

A much under-appreciated blessing. At any age.

Over the past half-ish century, I've visited any number of elderly relatives and friends who were living in the US's long-term care facilities. However bright the decor, or kind the care staff - there is a very bleak "people whose ability to do anything useful has died, waiting for the rest of death" aura to them.

parpfish• 6 months ago

Over my life I have learned “you must be useful to be valued” and I’m desperately trying to unlearn it.

Reason one is that I should learn to chill out and relax.

Reason two is that I know old age will hit me very hard once I feel “useless” and I should prepare for that

Thlom• 6 months ago

Many old people do valuable work even though they are not in the workforce. They are the backbone of many voluntary organizations, they are often the backbone of their apartment complex taking on janitorial work and administrative work, they are baby sitters, home work assistants, they taken on small jobs no one else want to like election clerks and exam monitors. Some start up a small business so the community can get access to their expertise. One guy I know closed his musical instruments repair shop a few years ago, but started up again in smaller scale because there were no one else local to do the work.

dfxm12• 6 months ago

growing number of Americans who extend their working days well past the typical retirement age as the cost of living in the US has soared, wages have stagnated and many therefore have been unable to save.

Calling this a blessing in the larger context is unconscionable. The USA is the richest country in the world. If someone needs to work into their 100s, it is a sign of failure from our political leaders.

Additionally, "working" and "having a purpose" should not be conflated like this. These are separate things.

bloppe• 6 months ago

I agree that it's unconscionable to consign a centenarian to unwanted labor, but the article says this is not the case for Ginny.

Also, wages in the US have not stagnated at all. Wage growth in the poorest quartile has outpaced inflation and that of the other 3 quartiles.

Perhaps this is a bit of projection by the British Guardian.

cucumber37328422• 6 months ago

What's unconscionable is that people feel entitled to cherry pick stuff like this and then use it as fodder for shameless moral posturing. The damn near next sentence says this was not the case with her, it clearly wasn't her job, it was what she wanted to spend her life doing.

I don't wonder why public discourse is the way that it is.

wincy• 6 months ago

My grandfather retired and realized he had no hobbies to speak of, and no desire to travel. So he went back to doing what he enjoyed, he worked part time for the city doing sewer inspections. He’d use a bar and open a manhole, and do whatever it is he did then. He did this until into his 80s, until he passed a few years ago. I guess he just liked being useful.

My other grandpa is a retired design engineer, extremely handy, and while his body is failing from Parkinson’s, in his 80s he’s still smart as a whip. He was working around his farm until he hit 80 when his wife started displaying dementia signs.

I still call him up any time I need advice on fixing stuff round the house or my car.

darth_avocado• 6 months ago

Our neighborhood park maintenance volunteers are 80% old ladies in their 70s and 80s. Without things to do, body and mind atrophies. While it’s true that increasing number of people are having to work longer than they need to, a lot of them don’t do it out of necessity and is probably the reason why they’re still alive and kicking at that age.

nephihaha4• 6 months ago

It says she died at 105 and spent almost a century fishing for lobsters. I doubt she was catching many at the age of five.

defrost2• 6 months ago

* Fishing's not catching,

* I just pulled up a family video of several kids, mine, my siblings, friends, making commercial marbles for sale pulling glass from a furnace and rolling them on a bench, using optic moulds, canes for decoration, etc .. at the age of five.

Sure, we weren't running them like chimney sweeps or coal mine donkeys 24/7 - that's what they wanted to do for pocket money - make their own, how ever many, and sell them.

nephihaha4• 6 months ago

I doubt she was doing much in this direction until at least the age of eleven and even then...

rubzah• 6 months ago

Fishing's not catching

Sounds like something from an MLM seminar. "Telling's not selling!"

tokai• 6 months ago

She started working at the age of 8. Which we both know from reading the article.

nephihaha4• 6 months ago

I doubt she could do much at eight either. Maybe tie some knots.

simonw• 6 months ago

Presumably that's why they said "almost a century" and not just "a century".

jpk2f2• 6 months ago

From 8 to 105...97 years. I'd say that qualifies as "almost a century".

JoeAltmaier• 6 months ago

I just lost my Mom, at 97. We would go to lunch on Tuesday and then grocery shopping. She'd talk of the family and where they all were and what they were doing - it was MY day to catch up.

The last Tuesday we got back and she said "That was too hard. I think that was the last one." I agreed, and thought I'd call her next tuesday just the same and see if she'd changed her mind. But there was no 'next tuesday'.

Anyway, life is a gift and I miss her and Tuesday doesn't come but I feel the gap.

world2vec• 6 months ago

I'm so sorry.

gwbas1c• 6 months ago

They seem to know.

After my mother passed, I found an old essay talking about when her father (my grandfather) passed. She wrote that the last time we saw him, he seemed to know something was up, and then died that night.

My other grandfather figured it out after a blood test determined that he only had a few days left. His kids (including my dad) weren't going to tell him. He was 102 and otherwise healthy. Then, he wheeled himself across the nursing home into the meeting with the social worker, and announced the funeral home, church, and cemetery that his arrangements were with. He had such a big smile too. He "won" and couldn't ask for anything more.

franktankbank• 6 months ago

Beautiful really. I feel you, there is something about hearing stories from those close to you that hit 100x harder. I have cousins who keep these memories alive by digging into our far past family trees and document it for the rest of us.

petcat• 6 months ago

Some regard stories such as that of Oliver, who came to be known as her state’s “Lobster Lady”, as evidence of the growing number of Americans who extend their working days well past the typical retirement age as the cost of living in the US has soared, wages have stagnated and many therefore have been unable to save.

It's unfortunate that this publication decides to go hard on politics no matter what the feel-good story behind the article is. This Ginny lady clearly said that she loved banding lobsters and wanted to do it for as long as she could. It had nothing to do with working into her old age because she needed the money. Obviously that is a real issue, but has nothing to do with this story.

I like this news website better: https://www.positive.news/

At least it doesn't try to snipe me into feeling bad, or scared about everything.

VWWHFSfQ• 6 months ago

At least it doesn't try to snipe me into feeling bad, or scared about everything.

That's the guardian for you. They can't write an article without making sure the reader comes away feeling like a piece of shit. This piece should just be a celebration of Ginny's remarkable life, but they'll still make sure that you know that there are kids starving in Africa and elderly people working past retirement because they have no money.

I also love positive.news, and I subscribe to their newsletter. It's great.

kiliantics• 6 months ago

I took a boat ride in Maine on a lobster boat once that was owned and operated by a man in his 90s. Someone else in the town told me that he was being pressured to stop working by his family because he had recently fallen out of the boat while lobstering alone and broken a rib. He still managed to climb back into the boat with his injury and get home. It's a different America up there.

kadushka• 6 months ago

Can you imagine writing code for 100 years?

kravosdonna• 6 months ago

I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease a year ago at the age of 67. For several months I had noticed tremors in my right hand and the shaking of my right foot when I was sitting. My normally beautiful cursive writing was now small, cramped printing. And I tended to lose my balance. The neurologist had me walk down the hall and said I didn't swing my right arm. I had never noticed! I was in denial for a while, as there is no history in my family of parents and five older siblings, but I had to accept I had classic symptoms. I was taking amantadine and carbidopa/levodopa and was about to start physical therapy to strengthen muscles. I used different supplements that didn't work, so last July, I tried the PD-5 protocol—the best decision ever! My tremors eased, my energy returned, and I sleep soundly. I feel like a new woman, and I can walk and exercise again. I got the PD-5 from www. limitlesshealthcenter. com

Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

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