Boston University has a term for those who make it to 100 years old without showing any outward sign of dementia or any other clinically demonstrable disease: “escapers.”
It’s a reference to how, as one inevitably approaches the limit of the natural human lifespan, morbidity is something to be “escaped.”
Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the beloved unofficial mascot of Loyola University and its basketball team who died Friday at the age of 106, was a veritable Houdini.
It’s axiomatic that people today live longer than in the past. Still, it is easy to overstate your odds of getting to 100, let alone 106.
Your chances of making a century are only about 2% to 3%, with more women at the top of that range, of course. The odds on making 106 are even more remote. The 2020 census found there are fewer than 11,000 people in the U.S. aged 105 out of some 340 million citizens. Mortality rates at that age are high, so Americans of Sister Jean’s age are considerably fewer. We reckon the odds of someone being born in 1919 and still being alive in 2025 are, conservatively, no better than a 1-in-35,000 shot.
Not the kind of tournament odds a basketball team would enjoy. Even the fine team at Loyola that found in Sister Jean, its unique chaplain-nun-cheerleader combo, their inspiration.
All of this is to say that Sister Jean’s life was remarkable just for its ongoing existence, let alone her ongoing vitality until so close to her death.
Sometimes, very old people downplay their accomplishment of longevity and don’t see how much of an inspiration they are for the rest of us: in actuality, they are living, breathing affirmations of life. When we are with them, we feel like more is possible for ourselves. They are triumphant humans in each and every case.
We were delighted to publish an extract from Sister Jean’s memoir, “Wake Up With Purpose! What I’ve Learned in My First Hundred Years,” in 2023. We had a very good time picking the section we liked the most and we ended up with the chapter that explored the moment when the Ramblers had just defeated Kansas State and were heading to the NCAA Final Four for the first time since 1963.
“The scoreboard may have said that Michigan had more points than we did that night,” Sister Jean wrote, “but there was no doubt in my mind that we left that court as winners.”
Sister Jean leaves this life as a winner, all right. No doubt whatsoever about that. May she rest in peace.
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