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France's oldest person, Honorine, turns 114 today

Evie Burrows-Taylor
Evie Burrows-Taylor - [email protected]
France's oldest person, Honorine, turns 114 today
Photo: AFP

Honorine Rondello was born into a fishing family in Brittany in 1903. Today she turned 114.

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Rondello, who hails from Brittany, has spent most of her life by the Côte d'Azur in southeastern France, after moving south from Brittany for work at the age of 16.
 
There, in her new home town of Menton, she met her husband. 
 
There they lived until allied German and Italian forces evacuated the town during the Second World War and the pair moved to the village of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume where Rondello resides today.
 
She worked until she was 73 and “never wanted for anything”, Rondello told the local Var Matin newspaper when she became the oldest living French person in September, after the death of Grenoble resident Élisabeth Collot, who was 113.
 
Yvette Florens (R), 85 years-old kisses her mother Honorine Rondello (L). AFP.
 
“At night when I can't sleep I sometimes recall my past, my youth. We weren't rich but we were happy, we were content with what we had,” she said. 
 
“Today people are never happy. The more they have, the more they want.”   
 
“She's a very humble, modest women, who's passionate about the news,” one member of staff told the France Bleu Provence radio station in September. "She reads the newspaper every day and watches the news on TV,” he added. 
 
In an interview with a local newspaper she confessed there was no secret to her exceptionally long life. 
 
"I don't realise what age I am," she said. "It's a shock when I want to do something but my body won't let me."
 

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