‘Indefatigable’ Chicago woman whose skydive at 104 drew admiration dies

CHICAGO – Ms Dorothy Hoffner, the centenarian who gained international adoration for

skydiving at age 104 earlier in October

, all while exhibiting an air of blase disregard for the attention the feat brought her, died in her sleep overnight on Sunday at her home in Chicago.

Mr Joe Conant, a nurse who had known Ms Hoffner for about five years and whom she had referred to as her grandson, said on Tuesday that a cause of death had yet to be determined.

Born on Dec 17, 1918, Ms Hoffner last week had her life briefly transformed from one of relative quiet – she loved watching reruns of dramedy M*a*s*h at the Brookdale Lake View senior living centre where she lived – to one packed with calls from reporters and TV producers trying to schedule interviews.

That interest was prompted by her unusual endeavour: Parachuting off a plane at such an advanced age on Oct 1, not to prove some existential point about seizing every thrill, but simply because she wanted to.

After all, the first time she had gone skydiving – at age 100 – had been fun, Ms Hoffner said in an interview last week.

Still, it was her recent 3,050m descent that turned Ms Hoffner, for many admirers, into an example of how to live life to the fullest or, at the very least, the embodiment of the belief that doing something exciting at an older age is normal.

As she told it, there was no hubris in Ms Hoffner before she boarded the small plane that she would later drop from while strapped to an instructor.

Instead, Ms Hoffner said she was thinking: “What are we having for dinner?”

That thought changed little even after she had touched down and was informed that she had probably broken the Guinness World Record for the oldest person in the world to skydive.

Mr Conant, 62, said that Ms Hoffner was initially not excited about all the attention she received from the news media last week.

But by the weekend, the attention had grown on her because “she looked at it as an opportunity to meet new people”.

During her interviews, she asked reporters about their lives and appeared uninterested in talking about her upbringing in Chicago in the early 20th century, after World War I had ended and as an influenza pandemic was raging.

Still, Ms Hoffner would share the basics: She grew up poor, could not afford college and worked at Illinois Bell, a telephone company that later became part of AT&T.

She never married or had children, which she long believed had granted her more freedom and adventure: Boat rides on the Danube in Germany, where she ate meals underneath starlight and listened to the tinkling of the water; weekend road trips in her blue Dodge Coronet; and random beach vacations in Mexico.

Among her friends, Ms Hoffner was known for her favourite saying, a twist on a Bible verse: “I go by ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’,” she said. “So I love all my neighbours. Of course, I don’t like them all.”

Mr Conant, who spoke to Ms Hoffner on the phone almost daily, recalled that someone from The Drew Barrymore Show spoke to Ms Hoffner for roughly an hour last week, asking about details of her life.

At the end of the call, the person asked if she would be interested in a televised interview.

“No, I’m good,” she replied, Mr Conant said.

Ms Hoffner then joked with Mr Conant, who had also skydived with her in October and helped arrange to have footage taken of the descent, that she would give him a black eye for getting her wrapped up in all the attention.

Mr Conant said they last chatted at the senior centre on Sunday and that she looked in good spirits as they reminisced about the skydiving hoopla.

He added he had always been struck by Ms Hoffner’s kindness and wit. She invited him to dinners and brunches, stayed up until midnight to talk to him after his shifts at the hospital, and, of course, unexpectedly told him that she had an itch to do that skydiving thing again.

She liked the feeling up there, she said, of falling yet remaining momentarily afloat, her top billowing as she looked down at a wide expanse of earth.

“She was always so indefatigable,” Mr Conant said.

Before parting on Sunday, they hugged.

“I love you, my grandson,” Ms Hoffner said, promising to see him again soon for dinner. NYTIMES