Washington’s oldest person turns 111

SHORELINE, Wash. – A woman who celebrated her 111th birthday on Tuesday is among an elite group of supercentenarians in the world.

Gunhild Foerster was born in 1893. She is the oldest documented person in the state of Washington and lives at the CRISTA Nursing Center in this suburb north of Seattle.

Foerster is one of 63 listed on the Worldwide Table for Living Supercentenarians. To be accepted for the list, you must be authenticated as being at least 110 years old.

Foerster was born in Oslo, Norway, and immigrated to the United States in 1914, eventually settling in Spokane with her sister.

After World War I she married a longshoreman, Arthur, and moved to Seattle where they raised two children. Arthur Foerster died in 1967.

Foerster has four grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

Foerster said she never smoked, drank only occasionally and walked several miles a day into her 80s.

Her advice for others: “Live a clean life.”